Russia: 6 Years Jail in Blogger – Calling on Incendiary Attacks at Recruitment Offices

He was sentenced to six years in prison for appealing to arson attacks on recruiting offices in the . Court of Justice in Russia sentenced a 35-year-old blogger to six-year-old prison, who in posts in social media denounced the military invasion of Ukraine. Nikolai Farafonov was found guilty by a military court of “public appeals to commit terrorist acts”. According to the indictment, he had posted “video and messages” through which he was calling for the firing of recruiting offices. In the more than two years of the war in Ukraine, dozens of arson attacks have been recorded at Russian Federation recruiting offices. According to the Non-Governmental Organization Memorial, which characterizes him as a “political prisoner”, Nikolai Farafonov lived in a small town of the Komi Republic and maintained a channel on the Telegram platform through which he strongly criticised the attack on Ukraine. He referred to the loss of Russian troops in Ukraine, the repression of the opposition in Russia, the “patriotic” education in schools, as well as the poor texts in his region. In October 2022, he had been fined for “acquiring” the army on the occasion of an online comment on the deaths of children in Ukraine. However, Farafonov did not comply and continued to publish critically about the Kremlin messages, until he was arrested last September.