At a debate in the 2nd Western District Military Court in Moscow, the state prosecution requested 9 years in prison for Ruslan Ushakov, the author of the True Crime telegram channel. This was reported to OVD-Info by listeners from the courtroom.
Ushakov is charged under four articles because of posts in his telegram channel about military «fakes» (clause «e» of part 2 of article 207.3 of the Criminal Code ), rehabilitation of Nazism (Part 4 of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code), justification of terrorism (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code) and incitement of hatred (point «a» of Part 2 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code).
OVD-Info writes that the publications talked about the shelling of Mariupol, the killing of civilians in Ukraine and contained calls for violence against Putin. At the same time, the witness for the prosecution, Anatoly Budkevich, an acquaintance of Ushakov, told the court that he read the channel once a week, but did not notice posts about the war there.
Ushakov said that during his detention on December 14, 2022, he was tortured by people dressed in civilian clothes, applying electricity to his fingers in order to get a confession. The prosecutor wanted to know if there were traces of torture on Ushakov's body, but judge Aleksey Grinev dismissed the question, as it refers to «a document that was not examined at the court session.» Now the state court claims that Ushakov did not admit his guilt and no pressure was put on him.