Russia Jails Senior Man For 7 Years For Denouncing Ukraine War: 'We Have Become Godless'

A court in Russia sentenced an elderly rail worker to seven years in prison Wednesday for online posts he made that denounced his country's bombing of Ukrainian cities, according to reports.

Moscow's Timiryazevsky District Court found Mikhail Simonov guilty of knowingly spreading false information about the Russian military, independent media outlet Mediazona reported, citing a statement provided by the Network Freedoms advocacy project.

In addition to being sentenced to jail, the 63-year-old was also banned from administering websites for four years.

Simonov, a native of Russia's southwestern Voronezh region who lived in Belarus, was detained in Moscow in November 2022 during a business trip over two comments he published in March that year on Russia's Facebook alternative, VK.

"While killing children and women, we sing songs on Channel One. We, Russia, have become godless. Forgive us, Lord!" Simonov wrote in one post, according to a translation provided by The Moscow Times.

He is understood to have referred to Russian state-owned television network Channel One, which is known for its distorted coverage of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Simonov also supposedly shared a photo showing the ruins of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol with the phrase, "Russian pilots are bombing children."

A Russian air strike on the facility in March last year killed up to 600 people, an investigation conducted by the Associated Press suggested.

Amnesty International also concluded that Russia was behind the attack, calling the act a war crime.

Killing, torturing or taking hostage of non-combatants in war violates the Geneva Conventions.

Meanwhile, the "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity" that was "carried out unlawfully and wantonly" is considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Russia denied claims its forces deliberately attacked the Mariupol theater and tried to pin the blame on Ukrainian troops.

Two people who found Simonov's comments contacted the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and an investigation determined Simonov had a "dismissive, unfriendly and aggressively hostile attitude toward the Russian authorities," according to the Network Freedoms statement.

"[H]e misled readers about the legality of the actions of the Russian Armed Forces during a special military operation, and also undermined their authority and discredited them, since, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, information about the alleged killing of civilians by Russian military personnel in Kiev and Mariupol does not correspond to reality," an investigator said.

In his defense, Simonov reportedly maintained that he was expressing pacifist convictions as a Christian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law last year that made knowingly spreading false information about the country's armed forces punishable by up to 15 years in jail.