Losing the argument. Moscow man Solim Kamina jailed for 8 years for criticising Russian army’s actions in Ukraine in online debate

Basmanny district court in Moscow has sentenced Solim Kamina to 8 years in prison after being convicted of spreading "fake news about the military“ and “public calls to activity against state security”. The charges stemmed from his April 2023 posts on the social network VK (VKontakte), where he wrote about a deadly Russian rocket strike on a civilian apartment building in Uman, Ukraine. He was also convicted for sharing a post with contacts for Russian soldiers who wished to surrender and for writing angry comments in a dispute with another user. In his final statement, Kamina, who pleaded not guilty, described himself as an “apolitical creative person” who acted on emotion and pleaded with the court “not to kill” him with a prison sentence.

The prosecutor had requested a sentence of 9.5 years; the court lowered it down to 8 years while also banning Kamina from administering websites for 4.5 years.

The charges related to Kamina’s online activity in April 2023. The “fake news” charge, under laws passed shortly after the 2022 invasion began, related to a post Kamina made about a Russian rocket strike on an apartment building in Uman, Ukraine. Kamina wrote: “Today on Russia 1, a segment aired that took footage of the Uman building, destroyed by a Russian rocket, and passed it off as a building in Donbas, falsely claiming it was struck by Ukraine’s armed forces last night. I get it: admitting that the Russian Federation killed 23 civilians yesterday, including 6 CHILDREN, is hard for any Russian to accept, but you’ve got to try. And that ‘Ukrainian air defense’ lie might have worked once, but when Russia tries to excuse every new strike on a residential area with the same old ‘It was THEM’ story, it’s just impossible to believe. Nobody believes the RF anymore.”

The charge of “calls to activity against state security” was brought over a post containing contacts for Russian soldiers who wished to surrender, as well as several comments. In one comment, Kamina wrote: “YES I [expletive] DREAM of going to Ukraine, take up a gun and together with Ukrainian fighters [expletive] rashist pig-dogs…”

Kamina, who has been in custody since October 2024, pleaded not guilty.

In his final statement to the court, Kamina described himself as an “apolitical creative person” who had acted under the “influence of emotions”. He told the judge he had struggled with drug addiction and, following an attack in 2020, suffered from “neurosis, depression, anxiety, [and] obsessive thoughts.” He pleaded with the court “not to kill” him with a prison sentence.

The prosecution’s case featured two witnesses, Gleb Gordeev and Artem Dokshin, students in an "Information Technology Security in Law Enforcement" programme. Dokshin told the court they had been told to appear by the interior ministry’s anti-extremism department, where they were on a work placement.

Kamina’s defence lawyer, Vladimir Vasilenko, noted that the witnesses’ written testimonies were “identical, word for word, comma for comma”. The other user in the dispute, “Nikolai Shinkaryuk”, was never identified or questioned by investigators.

According to the human rights group OVD-Info, Kamina is the son of an artist from Togo and a Russian circus performer. The group says he was beaten with an electrical shocker during his arrest.