A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, to six-and-a-half years in prison after a rushed, secret trial.

Kurmasheva, a Prague-based editor, was arrested last year during a family visit to the city of Kazan in south-west Russia for failing to register as a “foreign agent” and for spreading “false information” about the country’s armed forces, under crippling censorship laws enacted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, who also works for RFE/RL, said the case against her was related to a book that she had edited entitled Saying No to War. 40 Stories of Russians Who Oppose the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

Kurmasheva, 47, who is married with two children, is the second US journalist to be sentenced in Russia in recent years.