Russian streamer Anna Bazhutova, known on Twitch as Yokobovich, was sentenced to 5 and a half years in prison for live-streaming witness accounts of atrocities committed by Russian troops during the occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The French news agency AFP, via the Moscow Times, says that Baztova was found guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military on her Twitch channel. According to the report, the live broadcast originally occurred in 2023/6 (other sources, including Radio Free Europe, say the incident occurred in 2022), and included eyewitness records of the massacre carried out by the Russian army. The Ukrainian government has made similar claims of mass killings carried out by withdrawing Russian troops that have left hundreds dead, and Russia has rejected that claim and said that evidence of the massacre was "staged" by the West.

At some point after Bazhutova's flow, a Russian blogger supporting the war filed a complaint with the police, shortly after which her home was searched and her electronics confiscated. She was later arrested and reportedly has been in pretrial detention since 2023-8.

Bazhutova's Twitch channel was banned in 2023/3 due to a violation of the platform's Terms of use, but twitch does not publicly share details about the channel ban, so the details of the violation are unknown. Its fragments remain visible through the wayback machine.

Russia outlawed spreading "discredited" or "false" information about the military in 2022, shortly after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.In 2023, it expanded its law to encompass virtually all groups fighting for Russia, including mercenary units like the Wagner Group. The Moscow Times noted in a separate report that the crackdown "led to the silence of almost all anti-war statements and news that clashed with the Kremlin's war stories.""

Perhaps the most well-known target of the new Russian law, at least among gamers, was the Ukrainian invasion and the Russian ruler Vladimir Puglhovsky was sentenced to 8 years in prison for opposing the invasion, but in fact avoided imprisonment because he was not in Russia. Bazhutova, a resident of Moscow, was not so lucky.

"We consider the streamer Anna Bazutova (Yokobovich) to be a political prisoner," wrote the Political prisoner memorial website when Bazutova was arrested in 2023. "The criminal case against Bazhutova is designed to silence the voices of the Russian people who violate her right to free speech and criticize the war with Ukraine.

"With regard to war crimes in Bucha, the accusation of "knowingly publishing false" information is untenable, as an international investigation under the auspices of the United Nations, to which Russia is still a member, points to the guilt of the Russian side.

Bazhutova's lawyers described the sentence as "harsh" and said they would appeal. Bazhutova herself was the one who was more pointed out in her comments. "It's f**ked up," she said while in the witness box. "It's disgusting and vile."