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Olga Menshikh near the court building. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova \/ Mediazona<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Dorogomilovsky District Court in Moscow sentenced 59-year-old nurse anaesthetist Olga Menshikh to 8 years in a penal colony under the article on \u201cfake news\u201d about the army for two anti-war posts on VK,<\/em> a Russian social media platform. Only 15 people were subscribed to her page. Mediazona <\/em>closely followed Menshikh\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u0427\u0438\u0442\u0430\u0442\u044c \u043d\u0430 \u0440\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u043e\u043c<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n On April 8, Olga Menshikh, a 59-year-old nurse anaesthetist from Moscow, found herself handcuffed to a chair. \u201cEight people with a circular saw came to our apartment, turned everything upside down. They guarded me and my friend who was also in the house,\u201d Menshikh recounted in court. After the search, she was \u201cforcibly\u201d taken to the Investigative Committee, the agency responsible for criminal investigations, where she was charged with spreading \u201cfake news\u201d about the military. The next day, the Dorogomilovsky Court in Moscow placed her under house arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Menshikh was charged for two posts on VK,<\/em> which are now deleted from her page. The first post, dated July 14, 2022, was written on the day Russian military forces carried out a missile strike on Vinnytsia, a city in central Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[MFA spokeswoman Maria] Zakharova is talking utter nonsense at her freaking briefing. How does the earth even bear her? God, what is she saying… Meanwhile in Vinnytsia, Russia has shelled the city centre for the first time, rockets hit an office building, 12 dead, dozens wounded,\u201d the post read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second post was dedicated to the anniversary of the liberation of Bucha: \u201cBucha\u2014a small town in the Kyiv region\u2014was liberated from Russian invaders on March 31, 2022, exactly five weeks after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. During the five weeks of occupation in Bucha, 458 civilians died, 419 of them were shot and died from torture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The investigation concluded that by posting these messages \u201cat an unspecified time and from an unspecified technical device,\u201d Menshikh deliberately \u201ccreated the appearance of illegal activity violating international law by the Russian armed forces and state authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, the author of the posts \u201cforesaw the inevitable onset of socially dangerous consequences in the form of undermining the authority and discrediting the current government, the Russian armed forces, as well as respect and trust in the Russian people in the eyes of others\u201d and knew in advance that such posts \u201cwould cause people to feel anxiety, fear, worry and insecurity from the state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Menshikh did not plead guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the investigation, she denied authorship of the posts and said that \u201canyone\u201d could have gained access to her page. She specifically noted that she did not add anyone as friends herself, and only 15 people were subscribed to her page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since 2011, Olga Menshikh worked as a nurse anaesthetist at the Pirogov National Medical and Surgical Centre in Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am the chief innovator there: I write instructions, train in operating rooms, create Excel spreadsheets, do everything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the start of the war in Ukraine, wounded soldiers began arriving at the Pirogov Centre. The nurse admitted that it was emotionally difficult to see them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent years, she has been tried several times under lighter, administrative articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On February 25, 2022, she was sentenced to 9 days of arrest for a post that law enforcement regarded as a call to participate in an unauthorised rally, and in June 2023\u2014a fine for disobeying the police at an event on Alexei Navalny\u2019s birthday. According to the protocol, Menshikh \u201cbegan to behave inadequately, waving her hands.\u201d She said that she just sat down on a bench near the Pushkin monument, when \u201cpolice officers approached her, took her by the elbow and led her to the bus. She calmly got in, did not resist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n OVD-Info,<\/em> a Russian human rights project, mentioned Menshikh among those detained on the day of Mikhail Gorbachev\u2019s funeral on September 3, 2022. Case files show that the FSB, or Federal Security Service, \u201cmade inquiries\u201d about the woman even before the criminal case was initiated against her. Menshikh recalled in court how during the search, law enforcement officers made it clear that they had been watching her for a long time, including asking \u201cwhat she was doing in Belarus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the materials presented in court, on September 26, 2023, Dmitry Prokhorov, an operative of the Moscow FSB, examined Menshikh\u2019s VK<\/em> page in the presence of \u201crepresentatives of the public.\u201d Prokhorov took screenshots of the posts and saved them on a disk, which was later attached to the case. But Menshikh\u2019s defence drew attention to the metadata of the files: they were created even before the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On October 10, 2023, an FSB expert concluded that Menshikh\u2019s post about Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contained \u201cinformation in the form of condemnation of the actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine, as a result of which violent consequences occurred.\u201d The expert did not find similar statements in the other materials studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Investigative Committee reported the discovery of \u201csigns of a crime\u201d in Menshikh\u2019s posts on April 1, 2024. On April 17, 2024, Sergey Oganesyan, an expert from the Research Institute of the Federal Penitentiary Service, found signs of public dissemination of \u201cfake news\u201d about the Russian army, \u201cdiscrediting the activities of an official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,\u201d and a motive of hatred and enmity \u201ctowards the current authorities, military personnel, the people of Russia and the country as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Charge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Olga Menshikh and the Law Enforcement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How the Case Was Investigated<\/h2>\n\n\n\n