‘Politically unreliable’

61-year-old amateur radio enthusiast is sentenced to three years in prison for spreading ‘fakes’ about Russian soldiers looting, raping, and killing Ukrainians

Vladimir Rumyantsev, a 61-year-old boiler worker and an amateur radio operator in Vologda, set up a home broadcast station so that he could listen to content remotely while he took walks near his home. After February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine, he started to broadcast anti-war content from various sources, including Meduza. Though it’s not clear than any of Rumyantsev’s neighbors ever tuned into his DIY station (whose broadcast range was just several hundred feet around his home), police officers arrested him this summer and charged him with spreading “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces. On December 23, a judge sentenced him to three years in prison.

A Vologda court sentenced 61-year-old Vladimir Rumyantsev, who works as a stoker, to three years in prison on charges of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army.

Rumyantsev was found guilty of spreading fakes “for reasons related to political hatred or enmity related to any social group.”

According to the judge, Rumyantsev posted six video clips “with deliberately false information about representatives of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine looting, killing, and raping civilians, and destroying hospitals, maternity hospitals, schools, and kindergartens” on his VKontakte page. In addition, during a week in April 2022, he “broadcast on a certain radio frequency” similar “known false information.”

The news outlet Sever.Realii reports that Rumyantsev has worked his whole life in various roles at factories; he was also a trolley-bus operator and, more recently, a boiler worker. One of his hobbies is radio engineering; a few years ago, he started broadcasting on his own frequency. His radio transmitter, which he bought on AliExpress, broadcasts a signal a few dozen meters (several hundred feet) from his apartment. Before the full-scale war, Rumyantsev rebroadcast music and radio plays, but after February 24, he started to send out political material from anti-war channels — including Meduza, Radio Liberty, and Ekho Moskvy.

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Rumyantsev created his own radio station for himself, so that he could listen to broadcasts while taking walks near his home. In court, he emphasized that the station was “only the result of attempts to wire my own apartment for radio.” It’s unclear whether anyone besides Rumyantsev tuned in to his frequency — the investigation couldn’t find a single other listener among residents of neighboring buildings.

Radio Liberty claims that Rumyantsev informally named his radio station Radio Vovan. Speaking on the podcast “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent,” journalist Sonya Groysman said that he put a Vovan Media logo on videos uploaded to his YouTube channel.

Rumyantsev maintains his innocence, but he did not hide in his testimony the fact that he feels “extremely negative” about Russian authorities’ actions and about Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Rumyantsev to six years in prison, calling him “politically unreliable” and highlighting that he has attended protests in support of opposition politician Alexey Navalny and been fined twice, for a total of 60,000 rubles (around $850 USD), for “discrediting” the army.

The police arrested Rumyantsev in the summer, and he’s been in jail ever since. According to the court’s ruling, one day in pretrial detention counts for two in prison, meaning that Rumyantsev’s prison term will end in late 2024. His defense attorneys say they plan to appeal the verdict, pointing out that the only evidence in the case was a linguistic examination carried out by an expert hired by the police; the court ignored the defense’s request for an independent examination.

Rumyantsev is the fourth person to receive prison time under Russia’s new ban on “fakes.” Of the previous three, two were politicians. In May, Alexey Gorinov, a municipal deputy from Moscow’s Krasnoselsky District, was sentenced to seven years behind bars. In early December, the former head of the same municipal council, Ilya Yashin, was sentenced to eight and a half years. Another sentence — of two and a half years — was handed out to Alexander Tarapon, a resident of the Crimean city of Alushta, who hung a sign reading “Here lives a war criminal” on the gates of a relative who served in Russia’s National Guard.

The news outlet OVD-Info reports that there has been a total of 124 felony cases concerning “disinformation” in Russia this year. The courts have not yet heard the majority of them. The most common punishment in cases that have reached judges is community service.

Translation by Emily Laskin