Maria Makhmutova.
A Russian blogger from the Siberian city of Irkutsk who was charged with “discrediting” the army in an expletive-filled rant against the war in Ukraine that she posted on social media in June has been sentenced to 2 years and 7 months in a penal colony on separate charges.
Maria Makhmutova was sentenced after being found guilty on two charges of insulting a police officer and assaulting a law enforcement officer, according to the regional court press service, which added that Makhmutova had pleaded guilty on both counts.
Makhmutova had been in detention since early June, having fallen foul of Russia’s increasingly strict wartime censorship laws, which were introduced in 2022, but were amended to be even stricter earlier this year.
Makhmutova was initially charged with “discrediting the army” after she posted an Instagram reel in which she labelled Russian soldiers in Ukraine “undignified murderers” and saying that if they all “died tomorrow”, she would “drink wine”.
In the reel, Makhmutova went on to ask Russian soldiers “what the fuck are you proud of? What are you living for?”, before describing Russia Day, a national holiday held annually on 12 June to mark Russia’s 1990 declaration of sovereignty, as a “fucked holiday”.
In an entirely separate incident, however, prosecutors alleged that Makhmutova had verbally abused a traffic officer in the Irkutsk region on 9 June and, once in custody, had subsequently assaulted a “representative of the authorities” on 24 June.
