The court continued to hear the case of Yury Kokhovets, who gave an interview to Svoboda

In the Ostankino court of the Russian capital, a hearing was held on Thursday in the case of Muscovite Yury Kokhovets, who is accused of the so-called fakes about the Russian army. Details of the court session are provided by SOTA.

The case was initiated after Kokhovets participated in one of Radio Liberty’s street polls. Recently, Yury Kokhovets was charged with spreading “fakes” motivated by hatred or enmity due to the linguistic expertise of mathematician Natalya Kryukova and translator Alexander Tarasov.

On August 17, Tarasov was questioned at the meeting. He stated that he conducted an examination according to the methodology of the Ministry of Justice. Earlier, the same technique was used in the examination of the criminal case against the human rights defender Oleg Orlov, notes SOTA. Tarasov believes that hatred is contained in the phrase “gop-company”, which the defendant called the Russian government. According to Tarasov, Kokhovets’ speech contains a negative assessment of Vladimir Putin and the government as a whole.

Answering Radio Liberty’s questions during a street poll, Yury Kokhovets agreed in the summer of 2022. It became known about the criminal case against him in March of this year. During the interview, Kokhovets expressed his opinion about the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine. Among other things, he said that Russia was “bombing shopping centers, civilians were being shot in Buch… the military were shooting for no reason at all.”

It was reported in the first days of July that the court in Moscow had begun to consider the case of Yury Kokhovets. The accused is under a restraining order. Emu faces up to 10 years in prison.

• The Russian authorities call any information about the war in Ukraine, different from the version of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, fake. An article about the so-called fakes about the army was added to the Criminal Code shortly after the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The punishment for it can be up to 10 years of imprisonment or a fine of up to five million rubles.
• In Russia, dozens of criminal and hundreds of administrative cases have been initiated against those who spread information about the murders of civilians during the Russian occupation of Bucha near Kyiv. Some defendants were sentenced to long prison terms. The Russian authorities officially deny the involvement of the Russian military in the murders.