Prominent Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail by a Moscow court on Wednesday after it found him guilty of spreading 'fake news' about the Russian army, state media reported.
Investigators opened a case against Nevzorov last year for posts on social media in which he accused Russia's armed forces of deliberately shelling a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an assertion Moscow said was false.
Nevzorov's wife wrote on Instagram in March that she and her husband were in Israel.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Andrew Osborn)