Kirov activist sentenced to 8 years for words about Buche and “Putler”

A military court in Yekaterinburg sentenced Kirov activist Richard Rose to eight years in prison for posts on Instagram. This is reported by It’s My City.

Rose was found guilty of so-called fakes about the Russian army and calls for extremism. The case of “fakes” was also initiated against the activist’s wife Maria Rose, she left Russia.

The reason for the prosecution of Richard Rose was a video in which the invasion of Ukraine is condemned, and Russian soldiers are blamed for the killing of civilians in Buche.

Also, Rose is charged with extremism for a comment on one of the posts in which he stated that it was necessary to physically eliminate “Putler”.

The defense of Richard Rose notes that the activist was under a strong impression of the events in Buche when he published the post in the spring of 2022. The lawyer also emphasizes that the truth about what happened in this city has not yet been established, and therefore the statement about the killing of civilians cannot be considered a “fake”.

Rose himself fully admitted his guilt and apologized for his statements. The prosecutor’s office asked for 8 years in prison for him, the court did not reduce this term today.

• Russian courts have already handed down dozens of verdicts in cases of so-called “fakes about the army”, including in absentia – Alexander Nevzorov, Ilya Krasilshchik, Dmitry Glukhovsky. Politician Ilya Yashin received the maximum term – eight and a half years in prison. As a rule, the verdicts were handed down precisely in connection with statements about the murders in Buche or Mariupol. There are no acquittals based on this article.
• According to the official data of the Ukrainian authorities, numerous journalistic investigations, as well as international organizations, such as the UN and the OSCE, hundreds of civilians died in Buch during the Russian occupation in February-March 2022, and there are documented cases of the death of the city’s residents at the hands of the Russian military. Moscow, however, denies this, representatives of the Russian authorities say that it was staged or that the residents of Bucha were killed by the Ukrainian military.