A former military man in St. Petersburg was sentenced to four years in the case of “fake news” about the army because of a video in a telegram channel with 178 subscribers

The Kolpinsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced former military man Sergei Lintsov to four years in a general regime colony in the case of distributing “fakes” about the army (clause “e” of part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code), reports the joint press service of the courts.

According to investigators, in September 2022, Lintsov, being near the children's hospital in Kolpino, posted on his Telegram channel called “Bertrand Zobrist,” which had 178 subscribers, a 52-second video with “deliberately false information” about the use of aircraft RF. What was in this video is not specified in the court's report.

Lintsov, according to the press service, admitted guilt and “repented of his crime.”

The Lintsov case became known in early December 2023. The St. Petersburg publication MR7 called 39-year-old Lintsov deputy chief physician for economic issues at the Leningrad Regional Oncology Center. According to MR7, from 2007 to 2013 Lintsov served under a contract, then quit because his “opinion about the army changed.” In 2016, as the publication writes, Lintsov tried to run for the legislative assembly of St. Petersburg and the State Duma from the Great Fatherland party, but he was denied registration.

In an interview with the BBC Russian Service, Lintsov said that during his service he saw senior officers “constantly drinking alcohol and talking mostly in obscenities,” and also recalled cases of abuse of conscripts by commanders. According to him, the Russian leadership “believed that their army was capable of something,” but from conversations with former colleagues with whom he communicated before the start of the war, he “realized that nothing has changed in the army to this day.”