A hairdresser from St Petersburg has been given a jail term of five years and two months on a charge of spreading fake news about the Russian army.Anna Alexandrova denied posting eight anti-war messages on social media, insisting the case was motivated by a squabble over land with a neighbour.Her neighbour told the BBC that she had complained to prosecutors after Alexandrova had sent her daughter pictures of the war in Ukraine.Discrediting the armed forces and intentionally spreading fake news about the military became a crime in Russia within weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Ever since the war began, the Kremlin has intensified a crackdown on dissent, jailing hundreds of opponents and critics and silencing independent media.In a separate case on Tuesday, four journalists were jailed in Moscow for five and a half years after being found guilty of working for an “extremist organisation”.Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger had all insisted they were only doing their jobs as journalists, but the court found they had produced work used by an anti-corruption group founded by Putin’s chief opponent Alexei Navalny.Navalny was found dead in penal colony in the Arctic Circle last year. Video captured by Favorskaya on a courtroom video link the day before Navalny’s controversial death was the last time he was ever seen alive.Favorskaya worked for independent outlet SotaVision and was eventually arrested in March 2024 filming in a cemetery where he was buried.Russia’s restrictive laws on dissent have ensnared people from all walks of life. Denunciations have led to prison terms and Russians have informed on their colleagues and other people they know, in actions reminiscent of the Soviet era when a boy called Pavlik Morozov was lionised for betraying his own father.Hai …
