Russian military blogger jailed for 6.5 years for "fake news"

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian military blogger has been sentenced to six-and-a-half years in a penal colony after being found guilty of spreading false information about the armed forces, state investigators said on Wednesday.

Andrei Kurshin ran the "Moscow Calling" Telegram channel, which supported the aims of Russia's war in Ukraine but criticised the way that its military leadership was conducting the campaign.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War described Kurshin at the time of his arrest in August last year as a "fringe ultra-nationalist" who had strayed beyond the limits of permissible criticism of Russia's war effort.

(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Ros Russell)