A new criminal case was opened against former school teacher Alexander Byvshev

In the house of the former school teacher Alexander Byvshev in the village of Kromy, Oryol region, on January 17, 2017, a search was conducted, during which law enforcement officers seized a computer and other information media. After a search in the local administration of the Investigative Committee of Russia, the suspect was interrogated.

As Alexander Podrabinek wrote on his Facebook page, another criminal case was opened against Byvshev under Article 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity). The case was initiated in connection with the Ukrainian editions of Byvshev's poem "For the Independence of Ukraine" published in February 2015. As the author himself noted , it is a “polemical response” to the poem of the same name by Joseph Brodsky.

On July 13, 2015, the Kromsky District Court found Byvshev guilty of inciting hatred on ethnic grounds (under the first part of article 282 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced him to 300 hours of compulsory labor for poetry in support of Ukraine. He was also banned from teaching for two years. Back in the fall of 2014, after one of Byvshev's poems was recognized as extremist, he was included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring, and his accounts were blocked.