More than 100 Russian doctors signed an open letter to President Vladimir Putin calling for the release of a 33-year-old Russian woman who was sentenced to seven years in prison for using price tags in a supermarket to distribute information about Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The doctors, in appealing to Putin as the “guarantor of rights and freedoms of Russian citizens” — expressed “serious concerns” about the health of artist Aleksandra (Sasha) Skochilenko and insisted her actions did not violate Russian law.
“For disagreement with the war and a pacifist action that did not violate the law, the artist Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in prison,” the letter stated.
“In addition to indignation at the obvious injustice of the sentence, we, as the medical community, have serious concerns about Sasha’s state of health. She has been diagnosed with a number of serious chronic diseases that require proper medical supervision and a special regimen,” it added.
Artist Aleksandra Skochilenko smiles as she is escorted into court for her sentencing hearing in St. Petersburg on November 16.
On November 16, a court in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, sentenced Skochilenko to prison after finding her guilty of “distributing false information about Russian armed forces,” under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, which was bulldozed through both chambers of parliament and signed by Putin in a single day last year.
Dozens of journalists and people who came to support Skochilenko chanted: “Shame! Shame! Shame!” after Judge Oksana Demyasheva pronounced the ruling in Putin’s hometown.
