Blogger from Mari El fined for war video
A court in Mari El’s Yoshkar-Ola district has fined local blogger Andrei Filippov 1.8 million roubles (nearly 18 thousand euros) for a video about the war in Ukraine. The blogger was convicted of spreading “fakes” to incite hatred against the Russian army.
The criminal case against Filippov was prompted by a video on his YouTube channel entitled “The war between Russia and Ukraine: a view from the Ukrainian side”. In it, the blogger analyses the news of Russia’s full-scale invasion and highlights discrepancies with information from the Russian Ministry of Defence. In his video, Filippov urges to be wary of information about the war and to look at it from different sources. The lawsuit against the blogger was filed back in 2022. He spent almost a year in pre-trial detention. Filippov claims he was not allowed to visit his relatives or call them.
Any information about the war in Ukraine that differs from that of the Ministry of Defence is described by the Russian authorities as fake. The article on “falsifications” concerning the military was added to the Russian Criminal Code shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. It is punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to five million roubles.
