US-based Russian activist sentenced to 6 years in absentia for "military fakes"

Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Russian article.

A court in Ulan-Ude, Russia, has sentenced U.S.-based activist and researcher Maria Vyushkova in absentia to six years in prison on a charge of allegedly “spreading knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces.

"The kind of persecution in absentia and then attempts to put pressure on relatives who remained in Russia" are now becoming more widespread, Vyushkova VOA's Russian service.

The case stemmed from her research on the killings of hundreds of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, in March of 2022. Russia has consistently denied any involvement in the killings and has called the evidence staged.

Some media accounts at the time singled out Buryat soldiers in the Russian army as being responsible. Buryats are an Indigenous people who live mainly in southern Siberia near the Mongolian border.

Vyushkova, herself a Buryat, argued that Russian paratroopers from Pskov were in Bucha at the time of the killings. The court said it found her statements were motivated by political hatred, according to the independent outlet Glasnaya.

Vyushkova, a citizen of the Russian Federation and the United States, is one of the co-founders of the Free Buryatia Foundation, which has been recognized in Russia as an "undesirable", "terrorist" and "extremist" organization.

In April 2026, the Russian authorities put Vyushkova on the register of foreign agents, and in July, the Ministry of Internal Affairs put her on the wanted list.

Vyushkova, who lives in the United States and has not traveled to Russia for many years, says she is surprised by the attention of the Russian authorities to her activities.

She says she believes that "this is part of a large, coordinated campaign against activists from regional ethnic groups, because this case was opened against me in the summer of 2026 for an interview that I gave in the summer of 2023."

Vyushkova says she plans to completely ignore the sentencing. "I do not recognize any right of the Russian authorities to put me on trial, to accuse me of something and to judge me," she told VOA.