The Moscow City Court recognized the sentence of the author of “Protest of Moscow State University” as legal

The Moscow City Court recognized as legal the sentence of the author of the Telegram channel “Protestny MSU”, student Dmitry Ivanov in the case of so-called fakes about the Russian army due to posts about the war in Ukraine. This was reported by the correspondent of “Mediazona” from the courtroom.

In March, the court sentenced Ivanov to eight years and six months in a general regime colony. The investigation accused Ivanov of 11 publications about the events in Buch, Mariupol and the shelling of the Zaporizhzhya NPP, and considered the reports about the killing of civilians and the destruction of the civil infrastructure of Ukraine to be fake.

The prosecution’s evidence was the testimony of witnesses who were not familiar with the defendant, a linguistic examination that revealed Ivanov’s motive for political hatred, and the official position of the Ministry of Defense of Russia.

Ivanov pleads not guilty.

During the appeal against the sentence in the Moscow City Court, lawyer Maria Eysmont asked to include the reports of international organizations on the situation in Ukraine, but the judicial board refused to consider them “due to improper design”.

Ivanov also once again demanded to summon the official representative of the Ministry of Defense Igor Konashenkov, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian representative to the UN Vasyl Nebenzya to the court, since their statements about the war formed the basis of the sentence. They were already sent summonses during the trial of the case in the first instance, but none of them came to court. The Judicial Board of the Moscow City Council refused to do this.

In his last words, Ivanov said: “Even when we are held hostage by a situation that we have no power to influence, we are still free to decide how we feel about it. Paradoxically, it turns out that when we make a decision without fear, we nullify everything the efforts of the organizers of the repressions <...> Since the beginning of the war, the stakes have increased, but the meaning has remained the same. Yes, we see the sincere smile of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who received a quarter of a century of camps, and we read the humorous posts of Alexei Navalny. Be stronger than fear. Everything will be fine,” Dmitry Ivanov said in his last words.

• Dmitry Ivanov is a student of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Moscow State University and one of the creators of the Telegram channel “Protestny MSU”. For his civil position, he was repeatedly fined and administratively arrested.

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