The Moscow City Court on March 11 canceled the verdict and sentence of Pyotr Verzilov, the former publisher of the independent media website Mediazona, citing procedural violations, and sent the case back for retrial. A lower court in Moscow sentenced Verzilov in absentia to 8 1/2 years in prison in November on a charge of distributing via the Internet fake news about Russia's armed forces involved in the invasion of Ukraine. In October 2023, Verzilov, who holds Russian and Canadian citizenship, announced that he had joined the Ukrainian armed forces and he later left Mediazona. To read the original story from RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.
