Ukrainian-born paediatrician jailed in chilling show trial over alleged criticism of Russia’s war against Ukraine
A Moscow court has sentenced 68-year-old Nadezhda Buyanova to five and a half years’ imprisonment on the most serious of the repressive charges rushed into law to silence protest over Russia’s war against Ukraine. Buyanova’s arrest and this sentence are shocking both because there was nothing illegal about the impugned words, and because there is no proof that the Ukrainian-born paediatrician even used them. This was stressed by Buyanova’s lawyer Oskar Cherdzhiev after the verdict was announced on 12 November. He called the sentence harsh and illegal and stated that the defence will be lodging an appeal.
Nadezhda (or Ukrainian Nadiya) means ‘hope’ and some of the people who came to the Tyshinsk district court on 12 November to show support wore T-shirts with that one word and Buyanova’s photo. This was, however, always a political trial and the sentence, as acknowledged by lawyer Leonid Solovyov, was predictable. The criminal charges had, after all, although based solely on one person’s claim, been publicly demanded by Aleksandr Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee and crony of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. It is probably no coincidence that the five-and-a-half-year sentence against Buyanova, a recognized political prisoner, is likely to be the last handed down by ‘judge’ Olga Fedina at the Tushinsk district court. Her services have clearly been noticed, and in a decree signed by Putin on 30 September 2024, she was promoted to the Moscow city court.
The new Article 207.3 of Russia’s criminal code, introduced ten days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, punishes for what is claimed to be “public circulation of knowingly false information about the use of the Russian armed forces, etc.” It has been used from the outset to prosecute and imprison those who tell the truth about Russia’s bombing of civilian targets in Ukrainian cities and other Russian atrocities.
Although there was no ‘public circulation’ of any information, Buyanova was initially charged under Article 207.3 § 1, with the prosecution later changing this to the more serious Article 207.3 § 2. The alleged ‘public circulation of false information’, it was now claimed, had been motivated by political and national enmity. It seems that the ‘investigators’ asserted that they had found ‘compromising correspondence’ on Buyanova’s telephone. Screenshots of this were presented in court, with Buyanova insisting that this was not her correspondence.
Buyanova was born in Lviv on 29 March 1956 and studied medicine in Ukraine. She had, however, lived in Russia since 1995, and worked as a paediatrician at a hospital in Moscow.
The criminal charges against her were initiated after the mother of a patient, Anastasia Akinshina made unprovable claims about their visit to Buyanova, the paediatrician on duty, on 31 January 2024. First on social media, then in a formal complaint, she asserted that Buyanova had drawn attention to her son’s behaviour. She had replied that he was suffering because his father (her ex-husband), had been killed fighting in Ukraine. She claimed that Buyanova had told her that her ex-husband had been a legitimate target for Ukraine. Akinshina posted a second video that same day, this time asserting that she had been contacted by the police who suggested that she come in and write (“where necessary, we will dictate”) a complaint to the prosecutor and Investigative Committee.
Any Russian taking part in its country’s invasion is, indeed, a legitimate target, but that is not the point here. Buyanova denies saying any such thing, and there were clear contradictions during the ‘trial’ with Akinshina seemingly unable to decide where her son had been during the alleged comment. The only video footage shows the boy leaving the office several minutes before his mother left. On the video, he appeared quite calm. Thus, not only can words allegedly spoken behind closed doors not constitute ‘public circulation’, but they cannot provide legitimate grounds for prosecution, given that it appears to have been one person’s version against another’s.
Russian enforcement bodies were undeterred by this. By the time the police had ‘helped dictate’ the complaint, this pointed out that Buyanova had graduated from the Lviv Medical University in Ukraine and claimed that criminal charges should be brought against her over two supposed statements. Akinshina asserted that the paediatrician had said: “Any military serviceman of the Russian Federation army is a legitimate target for Ukraine” and “Russia is the aggressor who attacked Ukraine”.
In declaring Nadezhda Buyanova a political prisoner, the Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project pointed to the flawed nature of Article 207.3 and its use in fighting those telling the truth. It also noted the increased use of denunciations against work colleagues, neighbours, etc, and stressed that these may be untrue and used to settle personal scores, etc. Here it was noticeable how significantly the alleged statement had been embellished from the social media post to the formal complaint. As mentioned, there were other discrepancies, in particular, the initial claim that the young boy had been present, with this later quietly dropped.
On 1 February, Buyanova was dismissed from her post at the hospital. That decision was later revoked as unlawful, however Buyanova was already facing criminal charges. The Investigative Committee under his control has become increasingly politicized, with Bastrykin himself having just as actively commented later on several horrific cases where Ukrainian political prisoners were savagely tortured into ‘confessing’ to entirely fictitious acts. It is thus of particularly concern that such a powerful Putin ally recently proposed that Putin reinstate the death penalty by presidential decree.
That same evening, enforcement officers turned up at Buyonova’s home, carrying out a search in a demonstratively rough manner. Buyanova’s lawyer was, typically, prevented from being present. Buyanova herself was taken away for interrogation and charged. The first judge, Nadezhda Tkacheva from the Tushinsk district court did, at least, reject the prosecution’s application for Buyanova to be remanded in custody. On 19 April, the charge was changed to the more serious Article 207.3 § 2d (adding the political and national enmity motive and carrying a sentence of up to 10 years). On 26 April 2024, ‘judge’ Andrei Mikhailovich Kostyrev from the same court remanded Buyanova in custody with this extended every two months since then.
The claim that Buyanova was motivated by ‘national enmity’ seems especially cynical given the grounds for suspecting that she has been targeted because of her Ukrainian roots. The conditions in Russian SIZO [remand prisons] are appalling and Buyanova is not a young woman, yet her persecutors found another form of torment. Activists trying to get her basic food, hygiene and other vital items were prevented from doing so. Somebody had sent Buyanova 20 kilos of salt and, although the SIZO administration would have understood perfectly well that this was a cruel trick, they treated this as the one parcel allowed.
Please sign the petition here, calling for Nadezhda Buyanova’s release.
There is information here on how to write to Nadezhda Buyanova. Such letters are an important lifeline and also a message to Moscow that its actions are under scrutiny.