Vladimir Timoshenko given two-year sentence for using social media to call for uprising against ‘unpopular regime’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A court in St Petersburg has sentenced a man to two years in a penal colony for insulting high-ranking Russian officials on social media.



Vladimir Timoshenko, 43, was found guilty of writing a post on the popular Russian social network Vkontakte that “contained text of humiliating and insulting nature towards high-placed officials”, the court said in a statement on Monday.

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Timoshenko wrote the post in 2015 while serving a six-year prison sentence, the statement added, without giving details of his previous conviction.

In the post, which has since been removed from Vkontakte, Timoshenko called on Russians to rise up against an “unpopular regime”.

Prison terms for social media posts are not uncommon in Russia. In December 2016, an internet user was sentenced to two years in a penal colony for publishing an online article criticising Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria.

In May 2016, a Russian engineer was given two years and three months in a detention camp for sharing pro-Ukrainian articles on social media.

