A woman stands near a mass grave in Bucha in April 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLEG PETRASYUK
The mayor of the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, Borys Filatov, has been sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison by a court in Moscow for “inciting hatred against Russians”, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Tuesday.
The case against Filatov concerned a social media post he made in April 2022, in which he appeared to advocate the killing of ethnic Russians around the world after learning of the Russian war crimes that had just been committed in the Kyiv region town of Bucha.
When Ukrainian troops regained control of Bucha on 3 April 2022 after a month-long Russian military occupation, the images of executed civilians whose bodies were discovered littering the streets caused outrage around the world.
“I see how hatred is overwhelming all of us after what these sub-humans did outside Kyiv,” Filatov wrote on both Facebook and Telegram, adding that “the time for “icy wrath” had come.
“Now, we have the full moral right, calmly and with a completely unclouded mind, to kill these sub-humans all over the world,” Filatov wrote, though the post subsequently disappeared from social media after Russian pro-war bloggers reported the post.
Upon hearing the news of his conviction on Wednesday, Filatov, who is beyond the reach of the Russian authorities, called the verdict “an honour” and described his pride at being in the company of Ukrainian servicemen and journalists who had suffered the same fate.
