Russian woman faces criminal charges after drunkenly dancing at war memorial

A 35-year-old woman from the Russian city of Kurgan, in the Urals, has been detained after a video surfaced online that appeared to show her dancing at a local war memorial, Russian human rights group OVD-Info reported on Monday.

The woman, who has not been named, faces criminal charges for “desecrating a symbol of Russian military glory”, according to the regional Investigative Committee, and if found guilty, could face a fine of up to 3 million rubles (around €32,000) or a prison sentence of up to three years.

The footage, which was shared on social media over the weekend, shows the woman dancing late at night at a site memorialising soldiers from the region who died in conflicts fought by the Soviet Union and Russia in the latter half of the 20th century, including the Afghan War and the First Chechen War.

Later, local law enforcement published a video of the woman apologising for her actions, claiming she had been drunk at the time and vowing that it would not “happen again”.

The Russian authorities have scaled up the prosecution of anybody engaged in anything they deem the “desecration” of military symbols in the past several years, with a blogger from Samara sentenced to 10 months of community service in April 2024 for tickling the chest of Volgograd’s World War II monument, The Motherland Calls.

In April, a court in the Russian city of Kemerovo, in western Siberia, sentenced a local man to four years and four months in prison for promising to “piss on” a St. George ribbon, a Russian military symbol consisting of three black and two orange stripes, which has in recent years been co-opted by Russian pro-war propagandists.