Russian Oleksiy Moskalyov, sentenced to 2 years in prison for the fact that his 12-year-old daughter drew an anti-war cartoon, managed to escape from custody before the sentencing, Reuters reports.

Oleksiy Moskalyov is under house arrestPhoto: Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP / Profimedia

The man was sentenced to prison on Tuesday by a court in Yeremev, a city 300 kilometers south of Moscow, but a court spokesman said he managed to escape from house arrest overnight and that authorities did not know his whereabouts.

“The defendant, Mr. Moskalev, was not present at the sentencing as he escaped from house arrest last night,” he said, according to courtroom video obtained by independent news channel SOTA.

Moskalev was separated from his daughter Masha after he was placed under house arrest earlier this month and the girl was placed in a local orphanage.

The case sparked outrage among human rights activists in Russia, leading to an online campaign calling for the daughter and father to be reunited.

A shocking case of political persecution in Russia

Moskalev was convicted because of comments he himself published on the Internet about the war in Ukraine.

But the investigation against him was launched after last April, 12-year-old Masha drew a picture of Russian missiles flying at a Ukrainian woman and her child. The principal of the school where Masha studied alerted the police after she was shown the drawing.

Police began investigating Moskalev’s social media activity after he was initially fined 35,000 rubles ($460) for comments critical of the Russian military.

But later, in December, investigators opened another case against him, this time related to the discrediting of the country’s armed forces.

The family’s lawyer said that he visited Masha at the orphanage on Tuesday and received from her several drawings made for her father. He was also given permission to photograph her letter to her father, in which she wrote: “Dad, you are my hero.”

Russia criminalized the spread of “false” information and discrediting the country’s armed forces shortly after the war in Ukraine began last year.

In some cases, the Russian authorities applied this law retroactively, fining people for posts published before the regulatory act was approved.