A Russian court has sentenced a 26-year-old Ukrainian woman to eight years in prison for allegedly plotting an explosion on the day that Russia claimed to have annexed four Ukrainian regions, the independent news website Mediazonareported Monday, citing her lawyer.Iryna Navalna was detainedby occupying authorities in Mariupolin September 2022 on suspicion of attempted terrorism and the illegal storage of explosives.
She was accused of conspiring with Ukrainian special services to detonate a device at the Russian-installed administration building on Sept.
27, as Russia was conducting a widely disputed referendum to annex four partially occupied Ukrainian territories amid its full-scale invasion.Navalna, who evacuated Mariupol during Russia's spring 2022 siege of the city but returned in August 2022, lateraccused police of torturing her into falsely incriminating herself.
Ukrainian authorities have declared Navalna a prisoner of war, Mediazona cited her mother as saying.The Southern Military District Court in Rostov-on-Don on Monday found Navalna guilty and sentenced her to eight years in a general-security penal colony.Prosecutors had asked to jail Navalna for 14 years and hand her a 400,000-ruble ($4,100) fine.The court mitigated the sentence by striking down the prosecutions claim that the plot involved multiple people and not granting the request to pay the fine.Navalnas lawyer Ivan Bondarenko told Mediazona that the prosecutions case unraveled after one of three stated witnesses renounced his previous testimony against her.This ruined the testimony of the other two witnesses, Bondarenko said, adding that he had called on the court to acquit Navalna and vowed to appeal her sentence.Eight years in our reality is a compliment from the court.
Everyone understands it, but they cant acquit her, he was quoted as saying.Navalna does not appear to be related to late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who haddistant relativesin northern Ukraine.