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News outlet Sibir.Realii reported that its journalists had seen a letter from the director of a Siberian non-profit organisation, Yuri Ryabtsev, to Russia’s Minister of Internal Affairs, calling for a further investigation of Komarova’s comments.

Days after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia’s Kremlin-controlled parliament approved legislation that outlawed disparaging the military and the spread of “false information” about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russian courts have used the legislation to hand out fines and prison terms to opposition critics, including those who describe Moscow’s full-invasion of Ukraine as a war, instead of using the Kremlin’s preferred euphemism of “special military operation”.

Fighting remained fierce across eastern Ukraine over the weekend, with Russian forces repeatedly attempting to encircle the city of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, military officials said.

Russian attacks on Ukraine over a 24-hour period killed six people, local officials reported on Sunday.

Two people were killed and three more injured in the Kherson area after more than 100 shells bombarded the region over the weekend, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on social media.

Two guided bombs later hit key infrastructure in Kherson city, sparking a partial blackout and disruption to the area’s water supply, reported the head of the city’s military administration, Roman Mrochko.

Local officials said two more people died in the Donetsk area and that a 57-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman were killed by an airstrike that destroyed their home in the Kharkiv region.

In a separate incident, a 14-year-old boy was killed by a mine in a field in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. The explosion also injured another 12-year-old boy.