A Ukrainian opposition politician has been jailed for five years. The country’s Prosecutor General claims a former member of the Cherkasy City Council had expressed support for Russia. A state-approved court in Ukraine has sentenced a member of a banned opposition party to five years behind bars for expressing pro-Russian views in private conversations. The man, whose name has not been revealed, had served on the Cherkasy City Council before becoming an aide to an MP in the country’s parliament.

In March 2022, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine suspended the activities of the Opposition Platform – For Life political party.

The Kyiv regime’s authorities accused the party of operating in the interest of Moscow. It was eventually banned by a court ruling several months later.

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In a message on its Telegram channel on Monday, Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General revealed that the defendant was found ‘guilty of justifying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and glorifying its participants.’

According to the prosecutors, the former municipal council member aired his pro-Russian views in conversations with his close relatives and acquaintances. The man is said to have extolled Russia’s actions in Ukraine as well as President Vladimir Putin personally.

Officials quoted the defendant as saying: ‘To Russia’s victory on our long-suffering Ukrainian soil! It needs to be cleansed.’

Earlier, the Office of the Prosecutor General reported levelling similar charges against a 62-year-old woman, who is also from the city of Cherkasy in Central Ukraine.

The authorities said they believed she had justified Russia’s actions and compared the Ukrainian government to the Nazis in a phone conversation with her friend.

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In 2020, criminal charges of high treason were filed against the former leader of the Opposition Platform – For Life, Viktor Medvedchuk, over his visit to Moscow, where he had met with Russian officials.

Sometime later, the politician was put under house arrest. However, in late February 2022, around the time Russia launched its military action against its neighbor, Medvedchuk absconded. He was recaptured several months later and handed over to Moscow as part of a prisoner swap deal last September.

The exiled opposition figure has continued to criticize President Vladimir Zelensky’s regime. Earlier this month, Medvedchuk opined that the current leadership in Kyiv has ‘turned out to be not just bad negotiators, but criminal amateurs.’ He also accused the Ukrainian head of state of selling ‘out Ukrainians for cannon fodder’ after being promised Western aid.

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The politician claimed that President Zelensky is averse to the idea of peace negotiations because such talks would prove to be a ‘sentence for Zelensky, not only political but also criminal,’ with Ukrainians likely to start asking him tough questions.

It could be worse: The body of a former Ukrainian opposition lawmaker, Ilya Kiva, has been found in the Moscow Region. The politician was known as a staunch critic of President Vladimir Zelensky.

Kiva’s body was found on the grounds of the Velich Country Club hotel near a cottage where he was residing. He was lying face down in a pool of blood in deep snow, several Russian media outlets reported, citing law enforcement sources. The man suffered a wound to the head according to TASS, citing its source.

Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman, Andrey Yusov, later stated that Ukrainian security services were behind the attack, news outlet ‘Strana’ reported. Other media claimed that the country’s domestic security service, the SBU, orchestrated the assault.

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Kiva was a Ukrainian MP from 2019 to 2022 and a member of the ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ party, which was officially banned by Kyiv in June 2022.

Kiva himself was a fierce critic of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and the government’s pro-NATO policies. In a 2022 interview, he slammed the US and NATO for, as he said, using Ukraine as ’bait’ to provoke Russia into a conflict.

The politician left Ukraine not long before the start of Russian military action in February 2022, moving first to Spain and then to Russia. Ukraine stripped him of his mandate in mid-March 2022, less than a month after the start of Moscow’s operation.

He was eventually sentenced in absentia to 14 years behind bars in Ukraine. In his last social media post, dated Wednesday morning, Kiva accused Zelensky of drowning the Ukrainian people in blood,’ adding that fleeing abroad or committing suicide would be the only two options for him since the US Senate has yet to approve a bill to fund further Ukraine military aid.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a probe into the murder of the former Ukrainian legislator, the law enforcement agency said in a statement on Wednesday. The committee confirmed the identity of the politician and said he had been killed on Tuesday evening by an unknown assailant, who shot him with a gun. It did not name any suspects in the case and said that all possible avenues of inquiry were being pursued. You can share this story on social media: