Seasoned child therapist sentenced to 22 months behind bars for social media comments

On September 1, 2022, the Minsk Municipal Court convicted political prisoner Natallia Nikitsina, a seasoned physician with nearly 30 years of experience.

She was found guilty of ‘insulting a government official’ and ‘inciting hatred’ under Articles 369 and 130 of the Criminal Code. The grounds for the criminal case were her comments on social networks. Judge Valiantsina Ziankevich sentenced Nikitsina to 22 months of imprisonment and a fine of 6,400 Belarusian rubles (2,500 US dollars). 

Nikitsina was arrested on September 29, 2021, in her workplace at the Minsk Center for Child Psychiatry and Psychotherapy just a few hours after she learned that she was being fired. The woman was arrested in a criminal case opened for comments on the Internet after KGB officer Dzmitryi Fedasiuk and IT specialist Andrei Zeltser were killed in a fatal shooting. She has spent almost 11 months in pre-trial detention. Natallia Nikitsina has two sons.