Glamorous TV chef could be sentenced to jail over Instagram posts about Putin

Veronika Belotserkovskaya
EAST2WEST NEWS
Will Stewart17 March 2022

A popular TV chef could become the first person sentenced to jail in Russia under new censorship laws.

Defiant Veronika Belotserkovskaya, 51, known as Belonika or Nika, is facing prosecution for Instagram posts that fall foul of new laws banning criticism of Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine.

She had accused Vladimir Putin of turning “boys aged 18-to-20 … into the mincemeat of [his] imperial ambitions”.

Ms Belotserkovskaya, who was born in Odessa, Ukraine, made a succession of criticisms of Putin’s invasion.

In Russia the word “war” is banned as “special military operation”.

She and two unnamed people from Siberia have been accused of the “public dissemination based on political hatred or enmity under the guise of reliable reports of knowingly false information about the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”.

Under the guise of reliable reports, she posted “deliberately false information about the use of the [army] to destroy cities and the civilian population of Ukraine, including children, in the course of the special military operation,” said the Russian Investigative Committee.

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As such, “she discredited the state authorities and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”.

The new law could see Ms Belotserkovskaya jailed for up to 15 years.

Among her posts she accused Putin of waging “an aggressive WAR against a sovereign state”.

She said: “I do not consider the Ukrainian People my enemy. I consider them brothers and sisters.”

She added: “I am absolutely horrified by how many mothers from both sides will not wait for their boys to come home.

“Boys aged 18-to-20 led into the mincemeat of [his] imperial ambitions.”

In one post she said: “I am totally shocked by the economic consequences that we will all have to deal with for many, many years to come.

“I’m afraid for my children.

“I want them to live in a world without this monstrous hatred, which every day this, unnecessary f***ing war breeds. Which NO ONE wanted!”

Ms Belotserkovskaya also denounced the “patriots” and “propagandists” backing the war, which she fears could go nuclear.

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“Most of all, to be honest, I am afraid of the RED BUTTON,” she posted.

“The ‘Special operation’, which for all of us, for all mankind, can become the final one.

“Even in my Soviet pioneer childhood, at the height of the Cold War, I was not so afraid.”

It is believed Ms Belotserkovskaya’s posts were written from outside Russia, where Instagram has been blocked as part of a Kremlin crackdown on “extremist” social media.

She owns a villa in France where she is opening a cookery school, and believes that she will be arrested if she returns to Russia.

“I will not stay silent because I can speak and because I will never forgive myself [if I don’t]. I am not a rat,” she said.

The case against Ms Belotserkovskaya is proceeding in absentia and Russia may seek her extradition, the committee said.

The chef admits that she will “most likely never be able to go home [to Russia] again.

“For the first time in my life, I have encountered absolute and unadulterated evil,” she said.

She described Putin, 69, as a “tired of life man, bored with the absolute power that saw his obedient people carried in his beak for 22 years”.

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