EU slams condemnation of father of girl who drew anti-war picture as a ‘shameful act’

The verdict handed down to Alexei Moskalev, a resident of the Tula region, whose daughter drew an anti-war cartoon, is a “shameful act”, said in a statement by the EU’s Chief Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Peter Stano.
“A two-year prison sentence against Alexei Moskalev for luring his daughter to peace and sending her to an orphanage is an absolutely shameful act. Russia must respect its constitution and international obligations, and not punish children and parents for political reasons,” Stano said.
Aleksey Moskalev and his schoolgirl daughter came to the attention of security forces after the girl drew an anti-war drawing during a school art class in April 2022. It depicted the Russian and Ukrainian flags , the inscriptions “No to war” and “Glory to Ukraine”, as well as a mother and her child, in which rockets fly from the side of the Russian flag.
An administrative protocol was drafted against Moskalev discrediting the military due to social media comments in favor of Ukraine. Later, he became a defendant in a criminal case over the repeated discrediting of the military.
In March 2023, Moskalev was arrested and placed under house arrest, while his daughter was taken to a social rehabilitation center.
On March 28, the Efremovskiy district court of the Tula region sentenced the man to two years in prison. He himself was not present at the meeting, because on the same day he escaped from house arrest.
The Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the situation, said that in the Moskalev case “everything is much more complicated, not everything is so simple.” According to him, the family was in a “deplorable state with the exercise of parental duties”.
On March 29, lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov published a letter from Moskalev’s daughter, in which the girl called her father her hero and expressed her support for him.