Woman jailed in Russia for spreading fake news

A woman has been jailed in Russia for spreading fake news via social media about the Russian army.

Anna Alexandrova, a hairdresser from St Petersburg, claims she didn’t post anti-war messages on social media, stating that the case was “motivated by a squabble over land with her neighbour,” the BBC reports.

Alexandrova was arrested in November 2023 for eight posts she shared anonymously via the Russian social media network VKontakte. However, she denied claims that she had sent these posts.

Spreading fake news about the armed forces is a crime in Russia and was enforced within weeks of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia has clamped down on dissident behaviors, finding hundreds of people who oppose the state, the BBC reports.

Several journalists were jailed in Moscow for over five years for supposedly working for an “extremist organization.”

While the journalist claimed that they were just doing their jobs, the Moscow court found that they had generated work used by the anti-corruption group founded by Alexei Navalny.

Navalny was a Russian anti-corruption activist and political prisoner who died after complaining of malnourishment, likely due to mistreatment in a Siberian prison.

Through social media, Navalny opposed the Russian state, bringing to light corruption by publishing investigations that detailed this deception.