Tatyana Lazareva. Photo: Instagram

Russian TV host Tatyana Lazareva was sentenced to 6.5 years in absentia on Tuesday for “justifying terrorism” over comments she made about Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory, independent news outlet Mediazona reported from court.

According to the prosecution, Lazareva, who left Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, commented on Ukraine’s drone attacks targeting Russia in an interview posted on the I Gryanul Grem YouTube channel in August 2023, saying: “It’s terrible, but I feel glad.”

The court took just one day to deliberate Lazareva’s verdict, despite attorney Leonid Solovyov saying that the prosecution had no proof of Lazareva “justifying terrorism” with her words, Mediazona wrote.

Lazareva, who was branded a “foreign agent” in summer 2022 and added to Russia’s “terrorist and extremist” register this June, posted a message on her Telegram channel on Tuesday indirectly addressing the verdict, in which she wished her subscribers a Merry Christmas and said she had received “lots of messages of support” telling her to “pay no attention to fools”.

In May, Lazareva was one of many public figures deemed “foreign agents” who announced their plans to run in Moscow’s September elections, prompting Russian lawmakers to approve a bill disqualifying anyone who had been named a “foreign agent” from standing as a candidate in federal, regional and local elections.