The Russian rock star and self-confessed pacifist Yuri Shevchuk has been fined the equivalent of 800 euros at the third attempt for "discrediting the Russian army".
On May 18, Shevchuk opened a concert by his band DDT in Ufa, Bashkir, with a speech in which he recalled the many deaths in Ukraine and explained that home isn't the president's bottom that you have to kiss all the time.
Rather, home is the poor grandmother who sells potatoes at the train station.
Bashkir police officers then interrogated Shevchuk for an hour, drafted a report that he had discredited the armed forces and sent it to his hometown of St. Petersburg.
But its courts sent it back on the grounds that it was not apparent
how the rock singer insulted the soldiers.
According to media reports, all judges in Russia's second capital refused to hear the Shevchuk case.
The singer had always spoken out against war as a matter of principle and had repeatedly criticized Russian totalitarianism, press censorship and the caste system to President Putin, a Petersburg native like himself.
One commenter wrote that Shevchuk sets an example of how to live, so that no judge dares open a case against you.
In July the case was referred to a court in Ufa, which has now imposed the fine, albeit without notifying Shevchuk or his lawyer.
The singer had always spoken out against war as a matter of principle and had repeatedly criticized Russian totalitarianism, press censorship and the caste system to President Putin, a Petersburg native like himself.
One commenter wrote that Shevchuk sets an example of how to live, so that no judge dares open a case against you.
In July the case was referred to a court in Ufa, which has now imposed the fine, albeit without notifying Shevchuk or his lawyer.
The singer had always spoken out against war as a matter of principle and had repeatedly criticized Russian totalitarianism, press censorship and the caste system to President Putin, a Petersburg native like himself.
One commenter wrote that Shevchuk sets an example of how to live, so that no judge dares open a case against you.
In July the case was referred to a court in Ufa, which has now imposed the fine, albeit without notifying Shevchuk or his lawyer.
to institute proceedings against you.
In July the case was referred to a court in Ufa, which imposed the fine, albeit without notifying Shevchuk or his lawyer.
to institute proceedings against you.
In July the case was referred to a court in Ufa, which has now imposed the fine, albeit without notifying Shevchuk or his lawyer.
Kerstin Holm
Editor in the Feuilleton.
Follow I follow
Judge Yulia Yegorova based her verdict on Shevchuk's "negative comments" about the president.
She is said to have quoted "poor grandmother at the train station" but not "the President's butt".
Shevchuk wrote an appeal to the court, recalling that he has always opposed wars, whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Abkhazia, Georgia, Ossetia, Karabakh or Iraq.
He was of the opinion that political problems had to be solved through diplomatic channels.
Shevchuk's lawyers also requested that the Constitutional Court consider whether the law against "discrediting the Russian armed forces" passed in March was constitutional, but the judge refused.
In July in Vladivostok, a man was fined