A Russian court has actually sentenced a Siberian journalist and activist to six years in jail for spreading out so-called fake news about the war in Ukraine.Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist for the RusNews outlet, was detained in April for publishing details about the Russian battle of a theater in southern Ukraines Mariupol.

The Kremlin rejects responsibility for the air campaign, which is believed to have actually eliminated numerous civilians, despite various eyewitness accounts.The Leninsky District Court in the Altai region city of Barnaul discovered Ponomarenko, 45, guilty under Russias wartime censorship laws and handed her a six-year jail sentence, RusNews reported Wednesday.The court likewise banned her from carrying out journalistic work for the next 5 years.Prosecutors had asked for a nine-year jail sentence for Ponomarenko.

Its sufficient to open the Constitution and read it to show my innocence, Ponomarenko said in her last court statement Tuesday.

No totalitarian regime has actually ever been as strong as prior to its collapse, she stated in the defiant last word.Ponomarenko was hospitalized and given an inpatient psychiatric examination last summer.

She later tried suicide in protest of her pretrial detention.Ponomarenko is amongst nearly150 individuals to have been attempted under Russias law banning the spread of purposefully incorrect information about the army which was passed soon after the invasion of Ukraine.Sharing details that does not follow the Kremlins story of its special military operation in Ukraine is punishable by approximately 15 years in prison.The law belongs to a larger wartime crackdown that has actually seen hundreds of independent reporters and Kremlin critics leave the country to evade prosecution.