Russian man jailed for five years over street interview

A Russian man convicted of criticizing the Ukraine conflict in a street interview had his sentence toughened on Tuesday from five years’ hard labor to five years’ prison, state media reported.

Yuri Kokhovets, 38, accused Russian soldiers of shooting civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha “for no reason at all” in a spontaneous interview he gave to US-funded news outlet Radio Liberty in July 2022.

He was sentenced to five years correctional labor in April 2024 for spreading “false information about the Russian army” but prosecutors appealed, asking for a tougher sentence.

“The court has decided to change the sentence of Yuri Kokhovets and sentence him to five years of imprisonment in a general regime penal colony,” a Moscow City Court judge was quoted as saying on Tuesday by the state TASS news agency.

Russia has detained, fined or jailed thousands of people for opposing its Ukraine offensive, in what rights groups say is a massive crackdown reminiscent of the Soviet era.

Almost all domestic opposition figures have fled the country, while authorities have outlawed independent reporting on the conflict.