A woman from Kerch has been sentenced in absentia to five and a half years in prison over a post about the strike on the Kramatorsk railway station.

On 22 September, the Kerch City Court sentenced 28-year-old Liliya Khvylka in absentia to five and a half years in a general regime penal colony. She was charged under articles on spreading “fake news” about the Russian army (clause “d” part 2 article 207.3 of the Criminal Code) and drug possession (part 1 article 228 of the Criminal Code). This was reported to OVD-Info by her lawyer.

For the “fake news” charge, she received a sentence of five years and five months in a penal colony, and for the drug charge—five months. The court partially combined the terms, handing down a total sentence of five years and six months of imprisonment.

Khvylka was also banned from administering websites for three years.

During the proceedings, the prosecutor requested a sentence of nine years in a penal colony for her.

A resident of Kerch, a city in Crimea, was accused of “fake news” due to an Instagram post on 9 April 2022. In it, she wrote about the previous day’s missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station, which killed 60 people. Under the drug charge, she was accused of keeping marijuana at home.

Khvylka did not admit guilt for either episode. She says she initially gave a confession under pressure from law enforcement officers.

The case against her was opened in August 2022. During the investigation, she was placed under house arrest, but at the start of October Khvylka went into hiding.

Even before the criminal case was launched, the Crimean resident was detained because of other posts in which she condemned the invasion. She was then forced to apologise on camera “to Russian service personnel, their relatives and other citizens of Russia,” and the video was distributed in pro-government media. In addition, Khvylka was fined 30,000 roubles (about US$330) under an administrative offence of “discrediting the army” (part 1 article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code) and detained for 14 days under an article concerning drug use (article 6.9 of the Administrative Code). After the first detention, Khvylka deleted all publications and no longer wrote about the war in Ukraine.

• The news outlet “Ostorozhno, novosti” reported that in the 2010s, Liliya Khvylka studied law in Saratov, a large city on the Volga, and was an activist with the “Young Guard of United Russia” and the LDPR. After graduating, she returned to Kerch and ceased her activist work. Following the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Khvylka became active on social media discussing the war and changed her profile picture to the Ukrainian flag. The outlet noted she still had friends and acquaintances in Ukraine.