The Kineshma City Court of the Ivanovo Region imposed a fine of 230 thousand rubles on the 43-year-old screenwriter of the detective series “Kupchino” Vadim Kalashov in a criminal case for “discrediting” the army. This is reported on the court's website.
Kalashov was banned from administering pages on the Internet for two years and six months. Initially, he was given a fine of 250 thousand, but it was reduced by 20 thousand rubles “due to the detention of the convicted person until sentencing.”
The reason for criminal prosecution (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code) were three posts from 5 , September 11 and 30, 2022, which the screenwriter published in a group on VKontakte. These publications were found by employees of the FSB department for the Ivanovo region. The court press release does not specify which group we are talking about, but Kalashov has a public page dedicated to his work — this page is now closed.
The case came to court in April 2024. The hearings were postponed at least four times due to the illness of the defendant, once due to the illness of the judge, and once due to the absence of the defense lawyer.
From the case file it follows that on June 21, the proceedings in the case were stopped because the defendant “disappeared.” It is possible that the information on the court’s website is incorrect—the court’s press service assured Mediazona that Kalashov was sentenced in person on July 5.
On the Kinopoisk website, the plot of the series “Kupchino” is described as follows: “An experienced local police officer, Vasilich, serves in the police force out of conviction. And his partner, the young rocker Fedya, was pushed into a “cop” by his parents in order to temporarily hide from the threat of persecution for his son’s participation in an underground rock band.” The series is dedicated to how partners investigate a case and “become imbued with mutual sympathy.”
In addition to the script for the series, Kalashov wrote a series of science fiction books, “The Plague of Shadows.” He also writes scripts for computer games, according to the Laboratory of Fiction website.