MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) Russia on Tuesday sentenced a journalist to four years in prison for working with a foreign media outlet and allegedly helping prepare content that “discredits” the Russian army.

Since launching its offensive on Ukraine, Moscow has aggressively ramped up its crackdown on domestic critics and independent media outlets.

Russia’s FSB security service accused the woman — identified by rights groups as Nika Novak — of “cooperating on a confidential basis with a representative of a foreign media outlet,” the Interfax news agency reported, citing the regional court.

It said she “assisted in preparing inaccurate materials that discredited the Russian armed forces and state institutions,” adding the work was “aimed at causing reputational damage to the Russian Federation” and “destabilising” the country amid the Ukraine campaign.

She was arrested in December 2023 in Moscow and put on trial in the Siberian region of Zabaykalsky Krai, where she worked.

The trial was held behind closed doors and the court did not state which foreign media outlet she was accused of working with.

US-funded Radio Free Europe said Novak had been a “freelance correspondent” since 2022.

Moscow has designated Radio Free Europe a “foreign agent”, a label that imposes bureaucratic restrictions and is used to target outlets critical of the Kremlin.

Dozens of foreign journalists and Russian independent reporters left the country after Russia launched its full-scale military offensive in February 2022.

Days after ordering troops across the border, Moscow passed strict military censorship laws outlining years-long prison sentences for anybody accused of spreading “false information” or material that “discredits” the Russian army.

The Memorial human rights group has declared Novak a “political prisoner”.

It said that she appeared to “hold anti-Ukrainian views”, based on her social media posts but that she had also criticised local authorities for supporting the offensive and not paying enough attention to local issues.

Russia has previously targeted Radio Free Europe reporters and staff, most notably Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual US-Russian citizen who was arrested and then freed in a major prisoner exchange after spending more than a year behind bars, accused of breaching Russia’s foreign agent and media censorship laws.