A lady visited pediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova at Polyclinic No. on the final moment of January. 140 in north Moscow. The child, aged seven, had a difficulty with one of his eyes.
The 68-year-old doctor would be imprisoned for the conversation the toddler’s mother claimed occurred at the office during an 18-minute experience that would alter both children’s lives.
A criticism was crucial in the case, which is a result of Russians increasingly telling their own citizens about their opinions on the Ukraine war and other alleged political crimes. Critics claim that President Vladimir Putin‘s government is reducing opposition as a result of the flood of denunciations.
The family, Anastasia Akinshina, claimed in a video that she had told the doctor that the boy had suffered from trauma because his father had died fighting for Russia in the Ukraine war.
” Do you know what she told me?’ Well, my dear, what do you believe? Your father was a reasonable target of Ukraine,'” Akinshina said, mimicking the doctor’s words and tone.
Akinshina, who was weeping, claimed she had spoken to the doctor about the event and that they had a sense of urgency.
” So the question is: Where can I file a complaint about this woman right now so she can be imprisoned or sent to the lord in detention”? She claimed in the film, which became well-known on social media and made her a key witness in a highly regarded legal trial.
At the prosecution, Buyanova denied making the comment. However, the accusation was enough to end her 40-year career in medicine and her career despite the absence of any additional adult witnesses.
The physician, who had been in pre-trial confinement since April, appeared before a Moscow court on Tuesday, her dark hair carefully cropped. She was sentenced to five and a half decades in a penal colony after being found guilty of “publicly spreading intentionally misleading information” about the armed forces under a law enacted during the military censorship act.
Buyanova, who was born in Ukraine but has lived and worked there for 30 years, is a member of Russia. Akinshina allegedly acted out of hate, according to her attorney, Oscar Cherdzhiyev, who is of Russian descent.
Akinshina did not answer phone calls or reply to written inquiries for this account.
At the test, she stated:” We are Russian. Buyanova hates Russians. She feels animosity towards me, that’s what I think”, according to a record by independent Russian store Mediazona.
In their evaluation of Akinshina, two hospital administrators who saw her after the conversation with Buyanova described her as upset.
The prosecution’s case was based almost entirely on Akinshina’s account, along with a text read out in the test of an appointment with the infant, conducted by an agent of the FSB security services. Akinshina initially claimed the son was not present when the remarks were made, but later changed her account and claimed she had been speaking in horror at the time of the incident.
The defense’s request to ask the child its own inquiries was rejected by the judge.
Soviet rights group OVD-Info has recorded 21 legal trials in politically-motivated situations based on condemnation since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Eva Levenberg, a solicitor with the team, told Reuters.
Levenberg, who lives in Germany, said OVD-Info knew of a more 175 persons who had faced lower-level administrative costs for “discrediting” the Russian military as a result of persons informing on them in the exact time, and 79 of these had been fined.
The numbers Levenberg provided could n’t independently confirm them.
The Justice Ministry of Russia did not respond to requests for comment on the information or the use of denunciations to help prosecutions, including the Buyanova event. Dmitry Peskov, Putin‘s spokesman, said the Kremlin does not make any comments on court decisions in response to a Reuters topic.
Scum and rebels
Citizens need to support the country’s efforts to defeat its own internal rivals, according to Putin, who claims that the land is engaged in a surrogate conflict with the West. He declared that the Russian citizens would always be able to distinguish the real patriots from the slime and the criminals and simply spew them out like a fly that unintentionally flew into their mouths in March 2022, just days after the war.
Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, according to OVD-Info, the government have detained more than 20, 000 persons for different types of anti-war comments or demonstrations, and launched legal cases against 1, 094 individuals.
In media reports, court circumstances and on social media, cases have come to light of ally informing on ally, churchgoers denouncing clergy and learners reporting on teachers.
The recent weather, in the opinion of some, evokes the same kind of hostility and suspicion that existed under Soviet rule.
Olga Podolskaya, a former provincial deputy for the Tula territory in south-of-Moscow, claims to have earned a “pesky” status as a self-assured local politician ready to face the government. She added her signature to an open letter in the first hours of the Ukrainian invasion, calling it” an unprecedented atrocity” and urging people to speak out against it.
She was the subject of a public denial four months later after she collected money from the public to pay a fine related to a protest in 2020. Despite the fact that the accuser was identified as” Olga Minenkova,” Podolskaya claimed no one else had ever been and that she believed the person’s real name was a fake. Reuters has seen a copy of the denunciation, but could not establish who filed it.
Further public accusations followed, against her and her husband. When questioned about her feelings at the time, Podolskaya said it made her think of her great-grandfather, who was put to death in 1938 under the rule of the Soviets by an informant.
” The time of denunciations and ‘ enemies of the people ‘ had returned. I realised that they were hinting I should leave the country”, said Podolskaya.
She left, in April 2023. In September that year she was placed on the Ministry of Justice’s public “foreign agent” list. She requested Reuters not to reveal where she is currently based in order to protect her security.
” From a bygone era”
A well-known informer named Anna Korobkova wrote to Doctor Andrei Prokofiev in 2023 to demand that he be fired for comments he made to a foreign news outlet that were anti-war.
Korobkova did not respond to a comment request.
In a letter last year to Alexandra Arkhipova, a sociologist who was the target of one of her denunciations, Korobkova said informing was “in her blood” as her grandfather had worked with Stalin’s NKVD secret police. Arkhipova posted the letter on Telegram.
In addition to focusing on Russians who speak to foreign media, Korobkova claimed she sent 764 denunciations to government agencies in the first year of the conflict. She compared her work to “using submarines to destroy enemy ships.”
The scope or impact of her behavior was unknown to Reuters.
Prokofiev told Reuters he suffered no repercussions, as he lives in Germany. But he fears going back to Russia:” I do n’t think I would make it out of the airport. They would immediately file a criminal complaint.
Prokofiev took a particular interest in Buyanova’s case because, when he lived in Russia, his son was one of her patients. He refers to her as a quiet, modest person who “tapped awkwardly on her computer with just one or two fingers,” an “agenist figure from a bygone era.”
Her trial has received some criticism. In an open letter, Prokofiev was one of 1, 035 doctors who expressed their support for Buyanova, warning young people from getting into medicine. In a Facebook video compilation, some of the doctors spoke out while wearing scrubs.
At least seven doctors were questioned by police after signing them, according to Alexander Polupan, the doctor behind the Buyanova initiative and letters in support of dissidents, including the late Alexei Navalny. The Russian interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment right away, and Reuters was unable to verify those interrogations.
Polupan himself left Russia last year,” when it became clear I would be arrested any day”, he told Reuters.
A prosecuting an older defendant from a respected profession, according to Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asian Division, sends a message that no one can afford to defy the official line against Ukraine.
According to Denber, the claim that Buyanova claimed that Russian soldiers on the battlefield were legitimate targets for Ukraine would still be true under international law.
” That is the Geneva Conventions”, she added.
In some circumstances, lethal force can be used against enemy combatants who are clearly identified under international law.
Prosecutors used the trial to reveal details of messages and images on Buyanova’s cell phone that were used to depict a figure with pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian views.
The defense claimed that someone else had intercepted the communications.
In her final speech at the summing-up, the doctor was tearful. She requested that the court consider her years of service, fragile health, and age.
Supporters in tee-shirts printed with Buyanova’s unassuming image shouted” shame” at the sentencing.
Before the verdict was read, Buyanova expressed shock at what was happening.
” I ca n’t get my head around it”, she told reporters. ” Maybe I will later”.
