News
A court in Russia’s Tver region has sentenced a couple from the town of Konakovo – Lyudmila Razumova and Alexander Martynov – to 7 and 6.5 years in prison respectively for alleged vandalism and spreading “fakes” about the Russian army, according to a report from independent human rights media project OVD-Info.
The criminal case was initiated over posts on the “Odnoklassniki” social network and anti-war writings on the walls in a village in the Tver region. The prosecutor demanded sentences of seven years in prison for both Razumova and Martynov.
In March 2022, the couple were placed in custody for spreading “fake news” about the Russian military after Martynov reposted a post about murdered Mariupol residents which referred to the Russian military as “scum.” The man also posted a video with the caption that the Russian military had shelled residential buildings in Kherson. A post calling Russia’s Air Force Commander-in-Chief Sergey Surovikin a war criminal was also found on his page.
According to the investigation, the man’s wife, Lyudmila Razumova, had also spread “fakes” on Odnoklassniki. The six posts that investigators found referred to shelling of Ukrainian civilians by the Russian army. In some of the posts, the words “Rashists” (a portmanteau between a pejorative moniker for Russia and the word fascism) and “vata-fascists” (“vatnik” is a pejorative term used to describe steadfast jingoistic followers of propaganda from the Russian government) were used in relation to the Russian military.
The investigation also claimed that Martynov and Razumova made a stencil “in the form of a fusion of two people – V. V. Putin and A. Hitler” in the villages of Mokshino, Varaksino, Teshilovo as well as the settlements of Mirny and Novozavidovsky. In addition, the couple left inscriptions “Putler kaput,” “Ukraine, forgive us,” “Peace to Ukraine,” “Putin is war” and other slogans across towns and villages in the Tver region.