Oscar-nominated producer Alexander Rodnyansky has been sentenced in absentia to eight-and-a-half years in jail by a Russian court on charges of spreading fake news about Russia’s War in Ukraine.
The trial was related to social media posts by Rodnyansky, firstly in March 2022, in which he criticized a Russian missile attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, and in October 10, 2022 about attacks by the Russian army on civilian targets in Kyiv, Dnieper and Zaporozhye.
Rodnyansky, who was born in Kyiv but spent much of his career working in Russia, fled the country shortly after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Commenting on the legal action in a talk at NATPE Budapest over the summer, Rodnyansky said he was expecting an eight-to-ten year jail sentence, but that it was “too late to be scared” He noted that other writers, journalists and filmmakers in his entourage had already received similar sentences, and they were simply a tool of the Russian authorities to scare people into submission.
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