The Kaliningrad Regional Court sentenced Kaliningrad lawyer Sven Nordin to two years in a general regime penal colony in a case of humiliating the honor of a WWII veteran on the Internet (Part 4, Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code). The court's press service reported this in Telegram.
In addition, the defendant in the case was banned from publishing information on the Internet for three years. On May 7, the prosecutor demanded that the lawyer be sentenced to three years in a penal colony.
The press release does not name the person, but according to the court's file, today it only considered Nordin's case under this article. In addition, the information provided about the crime the convict is accused of matches what is known about Nordin.
The case against the lawyer was opened on August 9, 2022. The investigation believes that in September 2021, Nordin posted on his VKontakte page a post titled "KARATSUPA AND CHIKATILO: SIMILAR FACES, DIFFERENT FATES, ONE REGIME," ending with the words "of course, even Chikatilo would hardly have overcome the 'merits' of Karatsupa." The documents specify that Nordin, having formed an "approving attitude towards the actions of Adolf Hitler" and being a "supporter of the ideology of German Nazism," compared in the post the border troops colonel and Hero of the USSR Nikita Karatsupa and serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, thereby insulting the former. At the last hearing, the court added to the case file the FSB's conclusion that Colonel Karatsupa participated in "the suppression of the nationalist underground in the Belarusian SSR in 1944-1949" and can be considered a WWII veteran, since he served "at least six months" during the war and was awarded the medals "For the Victory over Germany" and "For the Liberation of Warsaw." The prosecutor also noted, SOTAvision reported , that the prosecution considers Karatsupa's grandson to be a victim in the case. Nordin petitioned to have the grandson's status recognized as erroneous, since he "has neither the status of a WWII veteran nor a power of attorney from his grandfather to represent his interests in court or act as a victim." The court rejected this petition.
In its statement, the court's press service added that "the defendant acted on the motive of rehabilitating Nazism, worshiping the personality of A. Hitler," and also kept at home "a framed photograph of Hitler and electronic materials with Nazi symbols." Nordin himself claimed that he was a "Swedish nationalist" and demanded to be stripped of his Russian citizenship.
Before the case was opened, in the summer of 2022, Nordin's home was searched, during which he was shocked and beaten. After that, the lawyer was taken to court, which ordered him to take certain actions as a preventive measure. In February 2024, the Investigative Committee refused to open a criminal case on the beating. Nordin had previously spoken about the difficult conditions in the psychiatric hospital where he was placed at the request of the investigator as part of the investigation.
- After the war with Ukraine began, the number of cases under the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism (Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code) increased sharply - presumably, the security forces are using this article to put pressure on those who could potentially oppose the "special operation" in Ukraine and its "denazification". According to the SOVA Research Center, many cases under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code are initiated unlawfully and should be classified under other articles of the Criminal Code or resolved within the framework of civil, not criminal proceedings.