Russian journalist gets six years for accusing Russia of Ukraine theatre bombing

FILE PHOTO: Emergency management specialists and volunteers remove the debris of a theatre building destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 25, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian journalist was sentenced to six years in a penal colony on Wednesday for accusing the Russian air force of bombing a theatre in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last April where women and children were sheltering.

The Lenin district court in the Siberian city of Barnaul also banned Maria Ponоmarenko from working as a journalist for five years, according to a court service statement. State prosecutors had asked for a nine-year sentence.