St. Petersburg woman gets suspended prison sentence for asking Putin’s dead parents to ‘take him away’

After attempting to commune with Vladimir Putin’s dead parents, a St. Petersburg woman has been found guilty of desecrating their grave, and given a suspended prison sentence.

The 60-year-old defendant, Irina Tsybaneva, visited St. Petersburg’s Serafimovskoe Cemetery last October, leaving a handwritten note on the grave of the Russian president’s parents. In the note, she urged the dead couple to take their son with them.

“Parents of a madman, take him with you, there’s so much pain and suffering because of him, the whole world is praying for his death,” Tsybaneva wrote. “Death to Putin; you’ve raised a monster and a murderer,” the missive concluded.

Under Russian criminal law, the maximal penalty for desecrating a burial site is five years in prison. In the course of the trial, the prosecution requested a suspended three-year sentence. The court has settled on a suspended two-year prison sentence for Tsybaneva.