The court has upheld a three-year prison sentence for a Christian preacher from the Voronezh region, a region in south-western Russia.

The First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction in Moscow has upheld the sentence of three years in a penal settlement for the Christian preacher and blogger Khristolyub Bozhiy Vegan, convicted over statements about Islam and Soviet soldiers. This was reported by SOTAvision.

The prosecution of Khristolyub Vegan became known in January 2024. A year later, the Voronezh Regional Court sentenced him to real prison time for insulting the feelings of believers (Part 1, Article 148 of the Criminal Code) and for the rehabilitation of Nazism (subparagraph “v” of Part 2 and Part 4, Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code). He was also ordered to undergo compulsory psychiatric supervision and treatment, along with a four-year ban on website administration after serving his sentence.

The court found Vegan guilty of insulting the feelings of believers over videos he published in July and December 2022. In these videos, he criticised Islam and the Quran in coarse terms.

The charge of rehabilitating Nazism was also brought against the preacher because of a video. In a YouTube video from January 2023, Vegan spoke about the recruitment of prisoners for the war in Ukraine and about crimes committed by Soviet soldiers against civilians during the Second World War. The preacher called the Soviet army “thieves and rapists,” expressed doubt that the actions of the soldiers in this war were of a liberating nature, and compared Stalin to Hitler.

This information in the video is exactly what the investigators classified as “knowingly false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War.” Investigators also stated that he “insulted the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland and humiliated the honour and dignity of a WWII veteran.” However, as the defence noted during proceedings, the only veteran questioned by the court stated they had not watched Vegan’s video.

Khristolyub Vegan did not agree with the charges and in court insisted on his full acquittal.

• On his YouTube channel, the preacher also posted anti-war videos in which he criticised the Russian authorities and Vladimir Putin. In his closing statement, Vegan noted that since the beginning of the war he had “used all his resources, strength, means and opportunities to stop the Rashist-Ukrainian war.” Vegan described the prosecutor’s demand for a ban on administering internet resources as an attempt to “shut him up.” He also said that he did not intend to comply with this ban.