Verkh-Isetsky District Court of Yekaterinburg arrested PR specialist Yaroslav Shirshikov in the case of justifying terrorism (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code) because of a post about the death of Vladlen Tatarsky. This was reported by a reader of «Mediazona» from the courthouse.
He said that no one was allowed into the courtroom, except for a lawyer and a prosecutor. Shirshikov himself was brought into the building through the main entrance with a hood pulled over his head. The PR man's mother told reporters that she was ready to provide her son with housing if he was placed under house arrest. data-type=»photo» data-slate-custom=»{«src»:»https://s3.zona.media/i/5dedf0893b72df5e2f239121048d8b3c»,»alt»:»»»,»imgSrc» ;:"https://s3.zona.media/i/5dedf0893b72df5e2f239121048d8b3c","migrationId":"1646998844495","html":null}» alt=»1″ />
Photo: Mediazona reader. On the right is Yaroslav Shirshikov's mother.
According to lawyer Fyodor Akchermyshev, the case against Shirshikov was opened because of a post on the Gusarskaya Bravada telegram channel, published a few hours after the news of the death of the pro-war blogger. The PR man wrote that he was “against [that] in the cities something exploded and people died,” but at the same time he wished for “glassy land” to Tatarsky.
The detention of Shirshikov became known on April 18. Then the associates of TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov in the telegram channel «UralLive» posted a video from searches at the PR man's house, on the record he was sitting in one bathrobe. Earlier, the same channel published complaints from pro-government activists about Shirshikov's posts about the deaths of Tatarsky and Darya Dugina.
In 2019, the PR man protested against the demolition of the square near the Drama Theater in Yekaterinburg and held a “prayer service” there with Pastafarians. Later, he was given a term in a colony-settlement because of a post about protests in the park and a video message in which he named Putin's envoy to the Urals Federal District Nikolai Tsukanov «Polish spy». In the summer of 2022, Shirshikov was fined for posts about the war.
Shirshikov was the first to report the disappearance of Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for the Moscow bureau of the Wall Street Journal, who was visiting Yekaterinburg. As it turned out later, the journalist was charged with espionage (Article 276 of the Criminal Code).