Russian investigators drop a hate speech case against a satirical poet

Investigators in Krasnodar have dropped their case against a local poet who was suspected of hate speech for a poem about burning an atheist teacher at the stake. The case was opened last October.

The poet, Maxim Drozdov, always insisted that his text, which he published on Vkontakte, was a work of satire. Investigators ultimately agreed, classifying his social media post as legal “self-expression.”