An artist who posted stickers critical of Russia’s war in Ukraine in a grocery store has been sentenced to seven years in prison, the latest development in the Russian government’s ongoing crackdown on those who protest the war or independently report on it.

That crackdown and the Russians speaking out in defiance of it were the subject of the Emmy Award-winning 2022 FRONTLINE documentary Putin’s War at Home, which featured the story of the artist, Sasha Skochilenko, and her girlfriend, Sonia Subbotina, who was advocating for her release. The duo’s experience was also chronicled in Sasha & Sonia: A Russian Love Story, a recently released short film from the FRONTLINE Short Docs series.

“I wasn’t surprised with yesterday’s sentence,” Subbotina told Vasiliy Kolotilov, a producer of Putin’s War at Home, on Friday. “They’re using her to intimidate everyone, to show that nothing can stop them. If someone thinks different, if there’s dissent, the sentence will be enormous.”

Skochilenko’s team plans to appeal, Subbotina told Kolotilov. “We’re standing firm.”

As Putin’s War at Home reported, the Russian president signed laws that cracked down on anti-war protests following Russia’s full-scale February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russian authorities arrested thousands of people who protested against the war during its first month. Amid the crackdown, some protesters resorted to subtler ways of expressing their opposition. Skochilenko was one of them.

As the documentary recounted, she posted stickers about the war in a grocery store, part of a trend Subbotina told FRONTLINE became popular in Russia.

“These stickers — they are very similar to regular store price labels. But instead of the price, there are numbers about the war in Ukraine,” Subbotina said in the documentary.

Skochilenko would pay a steep price for her actions.

“I remember well the day when Sasha was arrested,” Subbotina told FRONTLINE in the documentary. “Sasha left five anti-war stickers in a shop. The precise reason for her arrest was the price label with information about the victims in Mariupol,” the Ukrainian city that came under Russian assault early in the war.

A translation of the sticker reads, “Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol. About 400 people were hiding there from shelling.”

“The official line is this did not happen,” Subbotina said in the documentary. “So, it’s considered a fake statement against the Russian army and therefore a criminal offense.”

Russian authorities identified Skochilenko using surveillance cameras, and tracked her to a friend’s house. She was jailed and faced up to 10 years in prison if convicted of spreading false information about the Russian armed forces through the stickers. In footage of her courtroom appearances that was featured in the documentary, Skochilenko was shown in a cage.

Skochilenko, who has denied spreading knowingly false information, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Nov. 16 after being found guilty of spreading false information about the military through the stickers. The time she’s already spent in detention is expected to shorten her sentence. Prior to Skochilenko’s conviction, her lawyer, Yana Nepovinnova, told the AP that Sasha had intended through her actions not to denigrate the military, but to urge an end to the fighting. “She is a very empathetic, peace-loving person. To her, in general, the word ‘war’ is the most terrible thing imaginable, as is the suffering of people,” Nepovinnova said.

In a final statement before the court, Skochilenko said, “How fragile must the prosecutor’s belief in our state and society be, if he thinks that our statehood and public safety can be brought down by five small pieces of paper?”

“Say what you want — I was wrong, or I was brainwashed,” she said. “I will stand by my opinion and my truth.”

Subbotina told FRONTLINE after the sentencing that she was concerned about her girlfriend’s health behind bars, but that the duo would not lose hope.

“Me and Sasha made a promise to each other that we will cope with it,” Subbotina said. “We’re sure we will be rewarded for everything and there will be a wonderful life for us when Sasha is out of jail. We have lots and lots of plans for our future.”

A September 2023 United Nations report, disputed by Russian authorities, said that 20,000 people in Russia had been detained at protests between the start of the invasion and June 2023, and that more than 600 criminal lawsuits had been filed against people allegedly opposing the war.

For more on Skochilenko’s story and others who protested the Kremlin’s war effort, watch Putin’s War at Home, directed and produced by Gesbeen Mohammad and produced by Vasiliy Kolotilov, and Sasha & Sonia: A Russian Love Story, edited by Brad Manning and senior produced by Dan Edge.

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