The World Court of the Kasimovsky District of the Ryazan Region sentenced Sergey Yerzhenkov, a journalist from Beware of Media, to eight months of restriction of freedom for an inscription with an appeal to the President of Russia, made on March 4, 2022, on the monument to Lenin in Ryazan Kasimov, Ksenia Sobchak reported in her telegram channel.
“Erzhenkov and activist Sergei Skorev were forbidden to leave Kasimov and change their place of residence. They were found guilty in the case of vandalism, ”Sobchak said, specifying that Yerzhenkov was only filming the action.
According to the journalist, the prosecutor asked to sentence both to restraint of liberty, because, in his opinion, the defendants caused damage to the state, insulted the president, expressed disapproval of the Russian special operation and desecrated the monument.
Yerzhenkov doubted the conclusions of the investigation, calling the process “an absurdity that lasts a year.” “I pleaded guilty, I can neither work nor provide for my family. We have already suffered a well-deserved punishment, coming here every time. Restoration work has not yet been carried out, the monument has not been restored, the article about vandalism is a political screen,” Yerzhenkov said in a commentary for Sobchak. He also reiterated that he was tortured by law enforcement officers. The Ryazan Ministry of Internal Affairs denied information about the unlawful actions of the security forces against Yerzhenkov.
RBC sent a request to the Kasimovsky District Court of the Ryazan Region.
The court decision concerns the incident on the night of March 5, 2022, when an inscription appeared on the monument to Lenin opposite the administration in Ryazan Kasimov with an appeal to the Russian president.
The police had previously detained Yerzhenkov. In mid-October, he was detained near a mobilization point in Tver, where he was filming a report on the conditions in which the mobilized were kept. “The police claim that the journalists filmed the object, but this is not true – they were taken five minutes after arriving at the place, they just took out the cameras and did not turn them on and did not go inside,” Sobchak said and said that her detention employees considers illegal. Yerzhenkov was the author of many documentaries on the YouTube channel “Caution, Sobchak”, including works about torture in colonies.
