A Moscow region appellate court on Thursday upheld a four-year prison sentence for a 17-year-old girl who hung up posters at her school showing Russian paramilitary fighters serving alongside the Ukrainian armed forces.
Eva Bagrova was arrested in December 2024 after putting up the posters on a high school information board in St. Petersburg. One of the figures depicted in the posters is Denis Kapustin, the founder and leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, a group of anti-Kremlin Russians fighting with Ukraine.
Kapustin, who is known for his ties to far-right extremist circles and for founding a clothing brand that used Nazi symbols, staged his death last month as part of a Ukrainian counterintelligence operation. He is designated as a terrorist in Russia.
In October, a judge sentenced Bagrova to four years in prison after she was found guilty of “justifying” terrorism, but details of her case became public only this week. She was initially held under house arrest but later moved to a pre-trial detention center.
An appellate court judge in the Moscow region upheld the ruling on Thursday, independent media reported. At the hearing, Bagrova accused law enforcement officials of threatening to physically abuse her and her relatives as they questioned her in detention.
A state prosecutor called the allegations “subjective.”
Public schools in Russia have been hard-hit by the government’s tightening grip on information since 2022, with Russian soldiers fighting against Ukraine glorified throughout the education system.
“The authorities keep a particularly close eye on the education and indoctrination of minors, so they react very hysterically to any signs of disloyalty in education,” Dmitry Anisimov, a spokesman for rights monitor OVD-Info, told AFP.
At least nine people who were minors when criminal investigations against them started were jailed in Russia on politically-motivated charges, OVD-Info estimates.
Lawyer Dmitri Arevkin, who initially defended Bagrova and filed her appeal, confirmed the sentence to AFP and said he no longer represents her.
AFP contributed reporting.
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