The Adler District Court of Sochi sentenced Marina Melikhova, a resident of the Krasnodar Territory, to a year and five months in a general regime colony in the case of repeated discrediting of the army (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Administrative Code). This was reported by OVD-Info lawyer Maria Spasibukhova, who is involved in the case.
The prosecutor requested one year and eight months in prison for Melikhova.
A criminal case was opened due to two publications on a woman’s page on VKontakte. One is a video called “Shock! There is not a single official in Ukraine regarding the Northern Military District. publ. document of the Russian Federation". The second is a publication with the text “The Slavs do not want war!” On June 21, security forces came to search Melikhova’s home, and on June 23, she was sent to a pre-trial detention center in Armavir. She said that during the search, law enforcement officers beat her son Sergei, and she was kept in solitary confinement in difficult conditions: in the summer it was very stuffy and hot there.
Marina Melikhova previously headed the branch of the Council of Citizens of the USSR of the Kuban District of Krasnodar. In April 2020, a criminal case was opened against her for calls for extremism on the Internet (Part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code) because of a video on VKontakte with the title “May 9, 2020 may be the end of the Putin regime!” In March 2021, the woman was sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony, and in October of the same year, the Krasnodar “Council of Citizens of the USSR” was recognized as an extremist organization. In June 2022, Melikhova was released.
Before being imprisoned in a pre-trial detention center in 2023, the activist ran the YouTube channel “Marina Melikhova Krasnodar”, to which 70 thousand people subscribed.
Information about the term to which Melikhova was sentenced has been corrected in the news.
- Since February 24, 2022—the first day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—residents of Russian cities have been holding anti-war protests every day and talking about the tragedy online. Anti-war speeches and statements become grounds for criminal prosecution. At the moment, more than 750 people have become defendants in criminal cases initiated due to protest against the war with Ukraine. Read more about this in our infographic .
- Article 280.3 (Public actions aimed at discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation) was included in the Criminal Code in March 2022 - in this way the government 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. On March 14, 2023, the State Duma adopted amendments increasing the maximum penalty under this article, since then it has been seven years in prison.
- “Citizens of the USSR” is a movement uniting fighters for the restoration of the rights of citizens of the USSR. Followers of the organization believe that the Union continues to exist, and the Russian Federation is a “trading company.” Some of the participants in “Citizens of the USSR” refuse any ties with Russia as a state, for example, they do not sign any documents and notify local authorities of the need to vacate their posts. Supporters of Citizens of the USSR face various forms of pressure from the authorities, and some of their communities have been recognized as extremist organizations.