Prosecutors propose four-year sentence for student and YouTuber who became public face of protest persecution

Prosecutors have asked for a four-year prison sentence in the case of 21-year-old Egor Zhukov, a student at the Higher School of Economics, a Meduza correspondent reported from the courtroom.

Zhukov has been charged with calling publicly for extremist actions during a protest in the summer of 2019. He runs a popular libertarian-leaning YouTube channel and attended protests in person. Prosecutors have also asked the court to ban Zhukov from running any webpages for 2.5 years.

Since the charges against him were raised, Zhukov has become one of the best-known defendants in the so-called “Moscow case” against 2019 election protesters. He was initially accused of mass rioting, but those charges were dropped. Zhukov was then moved from a pretrial detention center to house arrest and presented with new charges of inciting extremism.