On July 2, the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg received a criminal case against Eldar Mikailov, a resident of Tolyatti (Samara Region). He is being prosecuted under five articles because of his posts on VKontakte. This was reported by the Sova Research Center.
There are five articles and seven episodes in Mikailov’s case.
The reason for the prosecution under the articles on justification or calls for terrorism on the Internet (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code) and calls for mass riots (Part 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code) was a video published on VKontakte calling for an "armed people's struggle" against Putin. It is not known which video exactly is being discussed.
Three more posts published in 2020 and 2023 became the basis for bringing charges under two parts of the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism: the Togliatti resident is charged with two episodes of disseminating false information about the role of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War via the Internet (Part 2 of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code) and one episode of disseminating disrespectful information about days of military glory and insulting the symbols of this glory, or insulting the defenders of the Great Patriotic War on the Internet (Part 4 of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code). The investigation claims that in his publications, Mikailov "devalued" the importance of Victory Day and rejected the "decisive role" of the USSR in the victory over Germany. The exact content of the posts is not yet known, but Sova notes that it has found several publications that could have become the reasons for the prosecution.
The Tolyatti resident is also charged with incitement to extremism (Part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code). The reason for this is still unknown.
The prosecution became known in March of this year; it was then reported that he had been placed in a pretrial detention facility. Previously, based on available information, we wrote that the defendant's name was Eldar Martynov, but now it has become clear that this was the name of the page whose posts were incriminated to Mikailov. In addition, it was not known that the defendant was charged under the article on calls for extremism.
- 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.