Human rights activist handed 3-year sentence for discrediting Russian army over Bucha

A court in the Vologda region city of Cherepovets has sentenced human rights activist Gregory Winter to three years in a penal colony for discrediting the Russian army in a social media post, Telegram channel SOTA reported on Thursday.

Prosecutors had requested a sentence of six years and three months for comments Winter made on social media about the Russian military’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine: “It is heartbreaking to see photos and videos from Bucha and Irpin,” he wrote. “Russian occupiers are raping children; women are raped, killed, and left on the side of the road; corpses are burnt.”

Ahead of his sentencing, Winter appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to request he be euthanised rather than forced to serve a long jail sentence, which, he said, as a diabetic without access to necessary medication and treatment, would be tantamount to a death sentence.

An ecologist and activist, Winter is the former regional head of NGO For Human Rights.

In 2020 he was found guilty of spreading false information about Covid-19 after he claimed prisoners who had tested positive for the coronavirus were being transferred between prisons.