Russian man faces prison sentence for Instagram post about war in Ukraine

The case of Olesya Krivtsova, a Russian student who ended up on the official Kremlin terrorist list, highlighted the dangers of using social media to criticize the Kremlin war in Ukraine.

Sitting in a small courtroom flanked by her two lawyers last month, Olesya Krivtsova faced a heavy sentence for his penchant for posting on social media. Barely 20 and until this year studying at a university in northern Russia, she was accused of "justifying terrorism" and "discrediting the Russian armed forces" and faced up to ten years in prison.

His apparent crime? An Instagram post asking why Ukrainians rejoiced when the main bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea was attacked in October.

The post finally placed Ms Krivtsova on the official list of terrorists and extremists. She was placed under house arrest and banned from using the phone or the Internet.

Mrs. Krivtsova did not wait for a court verdict: last week she fled the country.

"I decided to leave because I was desperate,” Ms. Krivtsova told The Friday from Vilnius, Lithuania, by phone. "It's impossible to prove anything in the Russian court."

As the Kremlin steps up its crackdown on free speech, social media platforms are become a more frequent target of sanctions. The government is increasingly penalizing people for posts it sees as critical of the fighting in Ukraine - with fines, jail time and, in extreme cases, temporary loss of custody of their children. /p>

In In the Ryazan region south of Moscow, for example, investigators opened a criminal investigation against a man who posted a joke about the Russian withdrawal from Kherson, in southern Ukraine. A student who ran an anti-war channel on the Telegram messaging app has been denounced by his university rector for posts criticizing the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine as well as alleged Russian atrocities in Bucha and Mariupol. This month he was sentenced to eight and a half years in a penal colony.

The social media crackdown comes as Russia also moves against activists, rights groups and news media outlets that express or report on anti-war sentiment, some of what critics say is a chilling effort to weed out viewpoints that diverge from Kremlin propaganda. President Vladimir V. Putin took the opportunity to enhance the state message this week during his appearance with China's top leader, Xi Jinping, in Moscow.

ImageOn the college campus where Ms. Krivtsova was studying, a large majority of students approached by a New York Times reporter said they di ...