Christina Lyubashenko

A citizen of Ukraine, after 24 February 2022, she went to Switzerland with her family and received asylum there. As her lawyer told her, in Switzerland she met a man who introduced himself as Vitaliy Yurchenko and called himself a refugee from Ukraine. He offered her to earn money by travelling to Moscow and launching blue and yellow balloons into the sky. Yurchenko paid for Lyubashenko's one-way ticket and rented a flat in Dolgprudny (Moscow region). When Lyubashenko got there, however, the conditions changed, according to the lawyer: Yurchenko instructed her to launch blue-and-white balloons into the sky and to put speakers with an anti-war speech out of the flat window. The Ukrainian refused, but Yurchenko threatened that he would inform the guardianship authorities about the daughters she had left behind in Switzerland and they would be taken to an orphanage. On 8 May 2023, Lyubashenko was detained. At first, a case of hooliganism was brought against her. Later the charges were toughened: the Ukrainian was charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation and dissemination of deliberately false information about the Armed Forces. On 17 June 2024, Lyubashenko was sentenced to 12 years in a general regime colony.

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