Russian court fines pensioner for liking two YouTube videos in presumed legal first

A court in Russia’s Arctic Murmansk region has fined a pensioner 30,000 rubles (€325) for “discrediting” the army by liking videos on YouTube, investigative journalism outlet Verstka reported on Monday.

According to court records, Vasily Yovdy, a Ukrainian citizen with permanent residence in Russia, was fined on 23 January for showing his “approval in the form of likes” under videos online.

Although the exact details of the two videos that Yovdy was fined for liking have not been made public, the court documents suggest that they were made by “foreign agents”, and that one of them dealt with the assassination of General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, in a terror attack in December 2024.

Yovdy, 72, did not attend court, but had confirmed in a previous statement that he had liked the videos in question and had known at the time that one of the videos had been produced by a “Ukrainian propagandist”, and that the Ukrainian secret services were “behind Kirillov’s murder”, Verstka reported.

A court in Moscow convicted three Russians and a citizen of Uzbekistan of Kirillov’s murder in January. The day after the attack, Ukraine’s SBU counterintelligence agencyadmitted responsibility for the assassination, calling Kirillov a “legitimate target”.

Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with Russian human rights NGO First Department, told Verstka that he believed Yovdy’s was the first case in which somebody had been fined simply for liking a YouTube video.

However, Verstka noted that the profile names of those who leave likes on YouTube videos are only visible to the account owner, and are not displayed to other users, casting doubt on the judge’s ruling that Yovdy’s likes represented public statements.