A Russian court will hold a custody hearing on Thursday for the custody of a 13-year-old girl who was forcibly placed in an orphanage after she drew an anti-war cartoon, prompting an investigation and subsequent conviction of her father for defaming the armed forces, Reuters reports.

Oleksiy Moskalyov’s problems began after his daughter Maria drew a picture in an art class last year showing Russian missiles flying toward Ukraine and the slogans “Glory to Ukraine” and “No Putin, no war.”

Secondary school No. 9 in Yefremov, 290 km south of Moscow, notified the police, who discussed the matter with both Moskalev and his 12-year-old daughter.

Then Moskalyov reported that FSB officers also came to talk to him and his daughter.

Soon, social services joined the case, and Moskalev was accused of bad upbringing of his daughter and fined. He was also accused of discrediting the Russian armed forces in social media posts, and the man said his account had been hacked.

He was detained on March 1, and the next day the court sent him under house arrest. Maria, known by the diminutive name of Masha, was sent to an orphanage.

Moskalev escaped, but was arrested in Minsk.

• The unknown side of the story of a Russian man convicted after his daughter made an anti-war cartoon: “He was probably put in a car and taken in the direction of Russia”

In the run, he was sentenced in absentia to two years in a strict regime colony for slandering the armed forces.

The state could have more powers if it limited Moskalev’s parental responsibility

“Aleksii is not worried about himself – he is extremely worried about what will happen to his daughter,” Moskalyov’s lawyer, Volodymyr Bilienko, told Reuters on the eve of a court hearing on limiting his father’s parental responsibility.

If his responsibility as a father is limited by the court, then the state will have much more power to decide the fate of his daughter, who has written many letters to her father and says she wants to stay with him.

“It seems that a child who has lived with his father all his life will end up God knows where, in God knows whose hands behind the stone wall,” Bilienko said.

Russian officials said that Moskalev was a poor father and that his daughter had poor grades in some classes at school. According to social services, Moskalyov did not communicate with either the school or social services.

According to social services documents seen by Reuters, her mother had not lived with her husband and girlfriend for more than seven years.

Prigozhin criticized Moskalev’s punishment

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s most powerful mercenary group, called the verdict in Moskalev’s case “unfair” and called for it to be reconsidered, as his daughter now faces life in an orphanage.

“Especially in view of the fact that Masha’s daughter will be forced to grow up in an orphanage,” Prigozhin wrote in a letter to the prosecutor released by the press service. “We are waging war against evil for the future of our children.”

Some of Yefremov agreed with such views.

“I feel sorry for the father and I feel sorry for the girl,” said one of the locals, Nadia. “I think it’s important to be humane and not tear the family apart.”

Others showed less understanding. Some said that Moskalyov insulted the armed forces, so he should be punished.

“There’s no need to discuss it all over the Internet and say that it’s all because of the raffle,” says Anna Borteneva, a resident of Yefremiv.

“He is being tried for insulting the Russian military – no one gave him the right to do that.”