Last April, Masha Moskaleva, a 12-year-old girl from the Tula region south of Moscow, drew a picture in her school art class that upset the teacher. The teacher ran to the head; the head called the police; the police told the FSB, Russia’s state security service, which interrogated Masha. Her father, a single parent, was arrested, beaten, fined and placed under house arrest. His daughter was taken into state care.
Moskaleva’s crime was “discrediting the military” – an offence passed into law after the invasion of Ukraine to criminalise dissemination of the truth. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Masha’s picture showed a woman and child, hand in hand, next to a Ukrainian flag. Missiles fly towards them from a Russian flag, on which is written “No to war”.
