Russian Celebrity Chef Sentenced To 9 Years In Prison For Criticizing Vladimir Putin & Raising Money For Ukrainian Army
A popular Russian celebrity chef has been charged and sentenced to nine years in prison for criticizing Vladimir Putin and raising money for the Ukrainian army, RadarOnline.com has learned.
52-year-old Veronika ‘Nika' Belotserkovskaya, who has been likened to the British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison on Monday after she was found guilty of criticizing both Putin and the Russian government.
According to Daily Star, Belotserkovskaya’s charges came shortly after Putin passed a series of new laws that severely punish any individuals who publicly criticize the government.
“Most of all, to be honest, I am afraid of the RED BUTTON,” the celebrity chef wrote on social media before targeting the 70-year-old Russian leader and calling him “an absolute and unadulterated evil.”
Although Belotserkovskaya was in France when the charges against her were announced, and she is expected to stay in France so as not to be imprisoned upon her return to Russia, a Moscow court has reportedly already seized her Russian homes and other land and property belonging to her family.
Belotserkovskaya, who was born in the Ukrainian city Odessa, was also charged and sentenced to nine years in prison after it was revealed she collected more than $320,000 for the Ukrainian army.
“I do not consider the Ukrainian People my enemy. I consider them brothers and sisters,” she wrote in one post flagged by the Russian government.
“I am absolutely horrified by how many mothers from both sides will not wait for their boys to come home.”
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“I'm afraid for my children,” she continued. “I want them to live in a world without this monstrous hatred, which every day, this unnecessary f------ war breeds. Which NO ONE wanted!”
“My dear Ukrainian brothers and sisters, I embrace you with all my heart,” she concluded her last post before fleeing Russia for France. “Strength and courage to you.”
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Belotserkovskaya was also flagged after she published a post accusing Putin of sending “boys aged 18-to-20 into the mincemeat of his imperial ambitions” and that Putin's “special military operation” in Ukraine is “an aggressive WAR against a sovereign state.”
Shortly after her remarks reached her 1.3 million social media followers, Russian prosecutors claimed Belotserkovskaya’s posts contained “deliberately false information about the commission by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of the murders of children, the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol and the killing of civilians in Bucha.”