A 19-year-old resident of Volgograd, Nikita Zhuravel, was prosecuted under article 148, part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on insulting the religious feelings of believers, the Investigative Committee of Russia reports . He is suspected of burning the Koran near the Cathedral Mosque of the city.
The investigation believes that Zhuravel committed this act on May 19 and recorded it on video. It is reported that he then handed the video to an employee of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), who posted it on a website “controlled by the CIPSO of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”.
At the same time, the young man allegedly admitted that he received 10 thousand rubles from the Ukrainian special services for this task. In addition, it is alleged that Zhuravel confessed to filming military installations.
Prior to this, the pro-Kremlin channel SHOT wrote that its source reported that former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev was allegedly involved in the action, and the purpose of publishing the video was to “separate the multinational Russian society” during the war.
Several videos of Zhuravel's detention are being actively distributed by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels.
Earlier, the Swedish television channel SVT, together with the Dossier Center, received documents from Russian special services that described influence operations in European countries. These included the burning of the Quran by Danish-Swedish far-right activist Rasmus Paludan in Sweden. The purpose of these actions was to incite ethnic conflict in Europe.