A Russian court on November 18 sentenced Sergei Lukashevsky, the former director of the Sakharov Center in Moscow, to eight years in prison. The conviction, handed down in absentia, accuses Lukashevsky of spreading "fake news" about the Russian military. The Sakharov Center was a museum and cultural center opened in 1996 to preserve the legacy of the prominent Russian physicist and Nobel Prize-winning human rights defender Andrei Sakharov .
In August 2023, a Moscow court liquidated the museum, which also focused on human rights in Russia. Lukashevsky, who left Russia following the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, faced charges over five Facebook posts condemning war crimes allegedly committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. The charges emerged in March 2023, while Lukashevsky still led the Sakharov Center.
The case highlights Russia’s crackdown on dissent, where accusations of “fake news” often target criticism of the war in Ukraine. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here . The Kremlin has accused U.
S. President Joe Biden of adding fuel to the fire and seeking to escalate the conflict in Ukraine by lifting restrictions on long-range weapons. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s comments on November 18 come after reports that Biden has granted Ukraine permission to use U.
S. weapons to strike deeper into Russia. The development comes after months of lobbying by Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for West.