The Kremlin has damaged its silence on the case of a single father sentenced to jail after his daughter’s anti-war drawing provoked the wrath of Vladimir Putin’s safety companies.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told reporters on Wednesday the case in opposition to Alexei Moskalev is just not as “simple” because it appears and attacked him for his “lamentable” parenting.
“Certainly, [it was] very lamentable with the efficiency of parental duties and with the availability of the kid’s dwelling,” Peskov claimed, saying the case in opposition to Moskalev is definitely “very previous.”
“I don’t need to and may’t go into particulars, however every part is way more sophisticated, every part is just not so simple,” he mentioned.
His feedback got here amid rising outrage that the Kremlin is seemingly utilizing the one father from the Tula area—and his 13-year-old daughter—to make an instance for another would-be dissenters.
The one father was sentenced to 2 years in jail on Tuesday for supposedly “discrediting” the Russian army after his daughter Masha drew an image that includes the phrases “No to struggle” and “Glory to Ukraine” at college. Police got here for Moskalev and his daughter the very subsequent day. Prosecutors later claimed they’d additionally discovered feedback by Moskalev on social media through which he criticized the Russian army.
Moskalev fled from home arrest earlier than he could possibly be taken to serve his sentence, a Russian courtroom mentioned. Whereas that announcement was instantly met by suspicion that one thing could have occurred to him in custody, Maria Ovsyannikova, a former propagandist who made headlines with an on-air anti-war protest final yr, said she knew the individuals who helped Moskalev escape and that he was in “secure fingers.”
His daughter, in the meantime, has successfully been deemed an orphan by the federal government because of the case in opposition to her father. Authorities say she is at the moment in a kids’s rehabilitation heart.
In a heartbreaking letter to her father printed Wednesday, Masha wrote, “I really like you very a lot, and know that you just’ve accomplished nothing flawed.”
“I imagine that every part will probably be OK and we will probably be collectively,” she mentioned.
“Sometime we are going to sit on the desk collectively and bear in mind all of this… I’m proud. Sure, Papa, I can say that I’m happy with my father,” she wrote, including that she was grateful to have understood “the bitter reality, slightly than a candy lie.”
“I encourage of you—simply don’t surrender,” she wrote, signing the observe: “Love you, you’re a hero. My hero.”
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