The artist was sentenced to restriction of freedom because of the inscription about Putin

A court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced street artist Leonid Cherny (real name Egor Ledyakin) to six months of imprisonment because of the inscriptions “No war” and “Putin fuck” on the wall of his house. This is reported by the publication “It’s my city”.

Black was found guilty of vandalism motivated by political hatred. The prosecutor’s office demanded a two-year prison sentence for him. The damage caused by the artist’s actions was estimated at 1,300 rubles. After the sentence enters into force, Black will not be able to leave the city, participate in mass events and change his place of residence.

According to the investigation, the artist wrote “No war” and “Putin sh**lo” on the wall of one of the houses with a can. At the same time, he was tried only for the inscription about Putin, and the anti-war inscription was excluded from the case. The artist’s defense insists that Black has nothing to do with these inscriptions. Lawyers point out that it is not clear from the case materials who exactly made them. “You can see from the cameras that some young man was crossing the road. There is no direct connection between the inscriptions and the fact that Egor was passing there.” – said lawyer Natalya Novikova.

The police detained Leonid Cherny in March 2022. The reason for this was allegedly that he “looked around suspiciously” and “wandered around.” In his backpack, they found spray cans with paint and stickers with the inscriptions “Gruz 200” and “**Zdec”. Black claimed that he was beaten in the police department because he demanded a lawyer. The police drew up an administrative report on him for appearing in a public place while intoxicated and arrested him for five days.

Later, he was charged with vandalism because of the stickers found in his backpack. However, the linguistic examination showed that they are not offensive in nature. Then Cherny was charged with creating inscriptions about Putin on the wall of the house.