The Volgodonsky District Court of the Rostov Region arrested pensioner Dmitry Lyagushin for seven days because of a video criticizing the celebration of Victory Day. Information about this was published on the website of the court, the SOVA center drew attention to the decision.
Lyagushin was found guilty of publicly displaying Nazi symbols (part 1 of article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), since in the video he published “Appeal to Timati , victory frenzy and the work of Chubais Mikhail Shendakov «contained a swastika. Lyagushin posted the video on his VKontakte page.
The video itself appeared in 2019 on the Soviet Television YouTube channel, which is now called Labor Russia. The video contains excerpts from the stream of the activist, Colonel Mikhail Shendakov, in which he criticizes various options for celebrating the Victory Day, calling the events held on May 9 “victory madness”. In addition, the video also mentions Vladimir Putin and other government officials in a negative way.
Shendakov himself was given two and a half years of probation in February 2021 because of the video “Surkov promised war to Donbass!” on youtube. In the autumn of the same year, the colonel was sentenced to three years probation in the case of a call to cut off the balls of the security forces, later the punishment was replaced with two and a half years of real life. In March 2023, another case was brought against a man about calls for extremism — according to him, Shendakov can be sent for compulsory treatment.