A Moscow court sentenced exiled Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar to eight and a half years in prison in absentia for spreading “fake news” about the Russian army, as part of Russia’s intensifying crackdown on opposition media. Zygar was charged with “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” according to the statement shared by the court. The charges were based on an Instagram post from April 2022, where Zygar accused Russian forces of committing war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine. Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, was occup…