In today's Daily Vertical, Brian Whitmore calls the Kremlin to task for its treatment of its hostage, Nadia Savchenko:
Russian jailed for reposting article saying Crimea grab was illegal:
By RFE/RL
A court in the Russian city of Tver has sentenced a man to two years and three months in prison for reposting material about Crimea on a social-media network.
The court on May 5 found that engineer Andrei Bubeyev reposted an article by publicist Boris Stomakhin that had earlier been deemed "extremist" and "threatening to Russia's territorial integrity."
The piece argued that the Ukrainian Black Sea region of Crimea had been illegally annexed by Russia and should be returned to Ukraine.
In April 2015, a Moscow court sentenced Stomakhin to seven years in prison on charges of promoting terrorism and extremism.
Stomakhin says the charges against him were politically motivated.
In the region of Chuvashia, investigators have accused 62-year-old Nikolai Yegorov of inciting national enmity for reposting the same Stomakhin article.
Yegorov denies the accusation and his trial is pending. (w/Ekho Moskvy, RBC)