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A Russian student who named his WiFi after a pro-Ukrainian slogan has been sentenced to 10 days in prison, the latest case involving civilians in President Vladimir Putin’s wartime crackdown on free speech.
A Moscow court on Thursday found Oleg Tarasov guilty of spreading propaganda and “publicly displaying Nazi symbols” and sent him to prison, state news agency Ria reported. The Kremlin has accused Ukraine’s government of being made up of neo-Nazis, despite the presence of a democratically elected Jewish leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Tarasov, a student at Moscow State University, named his WiFi network “Slava Ukraine!”, according to Russia’s independent Telegraph news agency Ostrozhino Novosti. This is a popular anti-war slogan that translates into English as “Glory to Ukraine.”
The student was arrested Wednesday morning after a police officer reported the WiFi network to authorities.
Police searched his room in the university’s dormitory and seized his Wi-Fi router.
The court said he “used the WiFi network to promote the slogan ‘Slava Ukraine!'”. He was found guilty of “transmitting to an unlimited number of users within Wi-Fi range” and using “symbols of extremist organizations.”
The student is the latest of thousands of people to be found guilty and sentenced to prison for criticizing Putin’s government over the invasion of Ukraine and its subsequent actions, including alleged war crimes, during the more than two-year conflict. be.
Since entering the third year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, “Slava Ukraine” has become a rallying cry for both the Ukrainian people and their supporters.
Pro-Ukrainian demonstrators take part in a rally at a Buenos Aires obelisk to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
(AFP via Getty Images)
Russians have been prohibited from calling the conflict a “war” since the war began, after President Vladimir Putin called it a “special military operation.”
Russian human rights organization OVD-Info has announced that more than 260 people in Russia have been sentenced to prison for crimes related to their anti-war stance. More than 20,000 people are in detention.
Last month, hundreds of people were detained in Moscow for laying flowers in memory of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle in mid-February.
Amnesty International said more than 21,000 people were targeted by Russia’s “repression law” aimed at “repressing anti-war activists” and sentenced in “grossly unfair trials.”
