On January 22, the Pervorechensky District Court of Vladivostok found musician Sergei Tokhteev guilty of five counts of “discrediting the army” and fined him 120 thousand rubles. The relevant information appeared in the press service of the city courts; the case file is available on the court’s website.
The man was also banned from administering websites for three years; His mobile phone was confiscated, “with the use of which he carried out criminal activities.”
The criminal prosecution of Tokhteev is related to five posts, the contents of which are unknown. In February 2023, a criminal case was opened against the man under the article on repeated discrediting of the army (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code), to which four more similar ones were later added. However, by the summer, all five criminal cases were combined into one. Tokhteev was charged in June, and in August he was placed in a psychiatric hospital for examination.
A criminal case for repeated discrediting of the army can be brought against those who have been prosecuted at least once under a similar article (Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code) during the year. So, in June 2022, the musician was fined 30 thousand rubles under this article: the reason was pictures and comments on VKontakte, where, among other things, there was criticism of the military symbols Z and V , as well as information about the tragedy in Bucha .
- 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 800 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.