A Russian court has sentenced a 26-year-old Ukrainian woman to eight years in prison for allegedly plotting an explosion on the day that Russia claimed to have annexed four Ukrainian regions, the independent news website Mediazona reported Monday, citing her lawyer.
Irina Navalnaya was detained by occupying authorities in Mariupol in September 2022 on suspicion of attempted terrorism and the illegal storage of explosives. She was accused of conspiring with Ukrainian special services to detonate a device at the Russian-installed administration building on Sept. 27, as Russia was conducting a widely disputed referendum to annex four partially occupied Ukrainian territories amid its full-scale invasion.
Navalnaya, who evacuated Mariupol during Russia's spring 2022 siege of the city but returned in August 2022, later accused police of torturing her into falsely incriminating herself. Ukrainian authorities have declared Navalnaya a prisoner of war, Mediazona cited her mother as saying.
The Southern Military District Court in Rostov-on-Don on Monday found Navalnaya guilty and sentenced her to eight years in a general-security penal colony.
Prosecutors had asked to jail Navalnaya for 14 years and hand her a 400,000-ruble ($4,100) fine.
The court mitigated the sentence by striking down the prosecution’s claim that the plot involved multiple people and not granting the request to pay the fine.
Navalnaya’s lawyer Ivan Bondarenko told Mediazona that the prosecution’s case unraveled after one of three stated witnesses renounced his previous testimony against her.
“This ruined the testimony of the other two witnesses,” Bondarenko said, adding that he had called on the court to acquit Navalnaya and vowed to appeal her sentence.
“Eight years in our reality is a ‘compliment’ from the court. Everyone understands it, but they can’t acquit her,” he was quoted as saying.
Navalnaya does not appear to be related to late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who had distant relatives in northern Ukraine.
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