A court in Chuvashia has sentenced local pensioner Nikolai Egorov to two years probation for sharing an online post that has been ruled "extremist".

The sixty-three-year-old, a guard at an asphalt plant, has been found guilty of inciting ethnic hatred.

The prosecution requested that the pensioner be sentenced to 360 hours of compulsory labor, but the defense insisted that the defendant be acquitted.

According to investigators, Egorov posted an open letter to journalist Boris Stomakhin on his page on social network VKontakte on May 8, 2014. The letter had previously been recognized as extremist material.

Egorov, said his lawyer Evgeny Gubin, insists that he had not made any such posts and has limited knowledge of the workings of the Internet.

"We do not agree with the court's decision and ... will appeal it," Gubin said.

