Oleksiy Moskalev, a Russian man investigated by police after his daughter filmed an anti-war cartoon at school, told a Tula court on Monday that he would rather be sentenced to death than be separated from his daughter Masha, Reuters reported.
In March, Oleksiy Moskalyov was sentenced to two years in a penal colony for slandering the Russian military. He escaped from house arrest in the town of Yefremov, Tula Oblast, and fled to Belarus, but was quickly arrested again and returned to Russia.
At a hearing during the appeal process on Monday, Moskalyov gave an emotional speech in which he said his “heart bleeds every day” at being separated from his teenage daughter, Masha, and said he would rather face the death penalty than be with her far.
The court upheld the two-year sentence and imposed a two-year internet ban on Moskalyov, his lawyer Volodymyr Bilienko told Reuters.
“He spoke from his heart… He was separated from his daughter for a very long time, he said that the child is what he lives for,” Bilienko said. “He tried to appeal to the humanity of the court, but it didn’t work.”
Moskalyov, decided to continue the appeal
Moskalev was convicted for comments he allegedly made himself on the Internet about Russia’s war in Ukraine. But the investigation began last year after Masha, then 12, drew a picture of Russian missiles over a Ukrainian mother and child last year, prompting her school principal to call the police.
The case attracted worldwide attention because Masha was taken away from her father before the trial and placed in an orphanage. Now she lives with her mother, who divorced Moskalev, but father and daughter can still keep in touch by writing.
A family support group said some people in the courtroom cried as Moskalev read a letter from Masha, in which she called him the best father in the world and told him: “We’ll be together no matter what.”
Bilienko noted that Moskalyov can be transferred from the pre-trial detention center to the colony at any time, but will continue to challenge him in two other higher courts. “We will fight to the end,” he said.
Read also:
- The unknown side of the story of the 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”
- Russia: although convicted, the father of the girl who filmed the anti-war cartoon managed to retain custody
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Source: Hot News
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