The Vologda city court sentenced 61-year-old stoker Vladimir Rumyantsev from Vologda to three years in prison in the case of spreading fake news about the army; The prosecutor's office requested six years. This was reported by his lawyer Sergei Tikhonov to OVD-Info.
Rumyantsev disseminated “knowingly false information” about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces “motivated by political hatred” on social networks and through a radio station in his own apartment (clause “d”, part 2, article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). On his pages in social networks, the stoker published information about civilians who have died in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. He does not admit his guilt.
The fact that a criminal case was opened against Rumyantsev became known as early as July 14. On July 15, the court already sent him to a pre-trial detention center.
On December 9, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow sentenced politician Ilya Yashin to 8.5 years in a penal colony for "fakes" about the army, which is the most severe sentence under this article. Yashin himself said that the government wants to intimidate the Russians. According to him, by appointing such a term, the authors of the verdict are too optimistic about the prospects for President Vladimir Putin. Putin himself, when Kommersant correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov began asking a question about Yashin at a press conference, asked: “Who is this?” Then the propagandist replied to the president that he was a “blogger” who received 8.5 years in prison, and asked if he didn’t think that such a term for words was “brutal”? “If it seems, then you need to be baptized,” Putin replied, boasting after that that he was educated at Leningrad State University and considers “interference in the activities of the courts” unacceptable.
It is now possible to get a criminal case in Russia not only for words, but also for “sad emoticons”, and even for a private conversation. One of the well-known cases is when Alexei Argunov, a teacher of philosophy and history from Barnaul, was fined for a sad emoji under anti-war posts. In addition, during the war, the court approved a fine for Russian citizen Alexei Veselov, who discussed the war with his wife in the dining room of the sanatorium. The woman shared her feelings with her husband about relatives from Kyiv, where her 87-year-old mother remained during the war, and her cousin did not get in touch. The husband was fined for such a conversation by denunciation, like many other Russians since the beginning of the war.