ASTRA Editor-in-Chief Anastasia Chumakova Sentenced in Absentia to Seven Years in Prison

ASTRA editor-in-chief Anastasia Chumakova was sentenced in absentia to seven years in a penal colony

A court in Ulyanovsk found the journalist guilty in cases over military “fakes” and violation of “foreign agent” legislation.

The “fakes” case is connected to publications by ASTRA and Chumakova’s personal Telegram channel about Bucha. Among them was an interview with a teenager who described how a Russian serviceman shot his father dead before his eyes.

The second charge concerns “foreign agent” status. At the same time, Chumakova herself was not designated a “foreign agent”: ASTRA received that status, while the journalist was entered in the register as a person connected to it. Before the criminal case, she had been fined several times.

In addition to the prison sentence, Chumakova was given a fine and banned from administering internet resources for four and a half years.

Chumakova lives outside Russia. Last fall, security officers searched her mother’s home, the journalist herself was added to the list of “terrorists and extremists,” and then she was put on the wanted list.

Photo: “Ostorozhno, Novosti”

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