Russia hands anti-Putin blogger surprise suspended sentence

Russia on Friday handed an unusually lenient three-year suspended sentence to a student convicted of making calls for extremism on a video blog condemning President Vladimir Putin.

Yegor Zhukov, a 21-year-old student at Moscow's prestigious Higher School of Economics, was charged over his YouTube videos, which have had hundreds of thousands of views. His conviction by a Moscow court now prevents him from blogging for two years and means he is on a list of "extremists."

Nevertheless the sentence by judge Svetlana Ukhnaleva was unexpectedly mild after prosecutors had asked for a four-year jail term.

Young Russian opposition supporters have been jailed for up to four years for participating in a July street protest in Moscow against Putin.

Zhukov, a politics student, was arrested in the summer over a protest called by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but then released under house arrest and charged with making online calls for extremism.

Fellow students and teachers at his university as well as a popular rapper, Oxxxymiron, regularly attended hearings in his case. After the sentencing, hundreds of supporters outside the court chanted: "A suspended sentence is still a sentence!" and "Acquit him!" Zhukov's lawyer Murad Musayev told journalists: "This cannot be seen as a complete victory because the guy is innocent."

Navalny wrote on Twitter that Russia "knowingly charged an innocent man." Deputy rector of the Higher School of Economics Valeriya Kasamara said the court's two-year ban on managing Internet sites means "he has no limits on Internet access, he is restricted only from blogging."