The Central District Military Court sentenced Egor Zhitnikov, a resident of Udmurtia, to three years and six months in a general regime colony, according to the court’s website.
A 40-year-old resident of the city of Sarapul was found guilty of justifying terrorism due to several comments on the Internet (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code).
The release cited the contents of only one of them: “Reliably knowing that in Russia the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, committed by members of Ukrainian military formations, was recognized as a terrorist act, Zhitnikov on the same day <…> published a text commentary containing a statement recognizing the ideology and practice of terrorism as correct.”
Since June 2023, the man has been on the list of persons involved in terrorist cases maintained by Rosfinmonitoring. The people there have their bank accounts blocked.
The comments themselves could not be detected. Zhitnikov has several pages on Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, but they are abandoned. One of the accounts is dedicated to the sale of carpets — in 2015, the man founded the company “Empire of Carpets” in Sarapul, which sold them. The man also published photos with his son on social networks.
In 2019, Udmurt police drew up reports against Zhitnikov under articles on the distribution of extremist materials and extremist symbols (Articles 20.29 and 20.3 of the Administrative Code). The first was returned to the police, and the second was forwarded to the magistrate with jurisdiction.