ST. PETERSBURG, June 26. /TASS/. Afghan reporter Kobra Hassani, convicted in St. Petersburg for illegally crossing Russia's borders, has not left the country for Afghanistan, her lawyer Yelena Fadeyeva told TASS.

"I do not confirm that Hassani boarded a plane to Afghanistan. Kobra forbade me to make any comments to the press," the lawyer said.

Earlier, media reported that Hassani flew to Kabul after failing to obtain official asylum in Russia. On June 25, the St. Petersburg court reviewed Hassani's sentence, which she received in February for attempting to leave Russia illegally through a sea port, but left it unchanged. The reporter had been sentenced to two years in a penal colony, but the court of first instance decided to release her because she had spent that time in custody during the investigation.

Hassani is a journalist, and after the Taliban movement (banned in Russia) came to power in 2021, she moved to Ukraine, from where she came to Russia after the start of the special military operation in the spring of 2022.

According to the administrative record published on the court's website, Hassani herself explained that she crossed the Russian border illegally in April 2022 and did not have a migration card, but first wanted to go from Ukraine to Poland and agreed with the taxi driver who transported her that he would take her there, but he took the journalist to Russia instead. The woman could not explain how and why she crossed the border.