The indictment was read out in the courtroom in the case of bodybuilder blogger Alexander Shpak, against whom a case was opened in absentia for distributing «fakes» about the army. This was reported by a Mediazona correspondent from the Basmanny District Court of Moscow.
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The reason was a three-minute reel by Shpak on Instagram, which he filmed after the breakthrough of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station on June 6, 2023. Shpak accused the Russian military of destroying the dam, whom he called «Rashists» in the video.
«They (Russian military — MZ) planned this and did it just before the Ukrainian counteroffensive,» the blogger began his video message. «The ecological catastrophe that has been inflicted on Ukraine is enormous. After the war is over, everything will, of course, be restored in the shortest possible time. Well, and for the rashists, these are also huge reparations that will fall on the shoulders of not just today's generations, but also the next ones,” he added.
According to the indictment announced in court, Shpak's video claimed that the actions of the Russian army led to the death of civilians, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and environmental damage.
At the same time, according to the prosecution, the blogger was guided by the motive of a hostile attitude towards the group of people «Russians» and the «social group» «servicemen of the Russian Federation» (clause «d» of part 2 of article 207.3 of the Criminal Code).
A criminal case against the blogger was opened a month and a half after the release of the video, on July 18, 2023.
45-year-old Alexander Shpak, who has 2.5 million subscribers on Instagram, was a guest on talk shows on federal channels while living in Russia, where he talked about his plastic surgeries and tattoos all over his body. The blogger left Russia for Turkey in 2020, and now, according to his TikTok, he lives in the United States. The bodybuilder regularly criticizes Russia's invasion of Ukraine on his page and posts footage of the aftermath of the fighting.