The Cheryomushkinsky District Court of Moscow sentenced the administrator of the Moscow Calling Telegram channel, Andrey Kurshin, to six and a half years in prison in a case of disseminating "fakes" about the Russian army motivated by political hatred (clause "d" of Part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by Mediazona, citing a correspondent in the courtroom.
The court also banned the blogger from administering websites for four years. The prosecutor requested seven years of imprisonment for Kurshina.
"This whole process is like in Harry Potter, when Umbridge made him write 'I must not lie' on his hand in blood," the defendant told reporters before the verdict was announced.
Kurshin's criminal prosecution became known at the end of August 2023. He was then detained on the street, and the court placed him under house arrest. The prosecution was prompted by two posts published on the Moscow Calling channel in the fall of 2022. In one of them, Kurshin called the attack on Krivoy Rog "a war crime by the Russian Federation," and in the second, he commented on the shelling of a maternity hospital in the Zaporizhia region.
At the beginning of the "hybrid war" in southeastern Ukraine, Andrey Kurshin fought on the side of the self-proclaimed "DPR" and had the call sign "Moscow". Later, he took a more moderate position and created the Moscow Calling Telegram channel, in which he criticized both the Russian and Ukrainian military command. "As a DPR serviceman from 2014-2015, I still maintain contact with the fighters. I cannot have any hatred a priori," he said about his criminal case.
Before his arrest, the man worked as an engineer at JSC RIF, which produces software for the Russian army, and he had a second level of security clearance to access state secrets.
- At the moment, more than 1,000 people have become defendants in criminal cases initiated because of statements about the war with Ukraine. Read more about this in our infographic .
- Article 207.3 (Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the armed forces of the Russian Federation) was included in the Criminal Code in March 2022 — this is how the authorities responded to anti-war speeches and statements, as well as the dissemination of information about the war that does not come from official Russian sources. The maximum penalty under the article is 15 years in prison.