Brickbat: Taking Their Word for It

Canadian officials said that, on second thought, they aren't going to block Maria Kartasheva from becoming a citizen. Just before she was due to take her oath of citizenship, an official informed her she'd been tried in absentia in Russia, her home country, and found guilty of "public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" for social media posts she made while living in Canada opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to a letter she later received from the Canadian government, that crime "would equate to false information under subsection 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada," and Canadian law says those charged with an offense that would be a crime in Canada may be denied citizenship. But after several media outlets picked up Kartsheva's story, the government said it would allow her to become a citizen.