The Telegram blogger was given 8 years in prison – he promised to give up the Internet

A military court in Moscow sentenced Roman Ushakov, the author of the Telegram channel “Nastoyastchee prestuplenie” to eight years in prison. Earlier, he reported on torture during detention.

Ushakov was found guilty of the articles on fakes about the Russian army, on the rehabilitation of Nazism, on the justification of terrorism and on inciting hatred. He was also banned from being an administrator of Internet resources for three years.

The case against Ushakov was initiated due to comments in the Telegram channel, which mentioned the shelling of Mariupol and the killing of peaceful Ukrainians, and also contained calls for violence against Putin. Ushakov ran the Telegram channel anonymously, the messages have been deleted.

Ushakov was detained in December last year. He told the court that when he was detained, he was asked to give incriminating evidence.

In his last words at the court session, Ushakov repented and asked for leniency, declaring that he was “ready to never use the Internet again.” He said that he only wanted to draw attention to the events with his messages. Also, Ushakov noted that his image on the Internet differs from the real one, and the messages were written “with sarcasm and dark humor.”