Sentences for three “USSR citizens” from Yekaterinburg, a major city in the Urals, have been reduced.

On 7 July, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court reduced the sentences of three “USSR citizens”—Aleksandr Bersenyev, Nadezhda Dubina and Svetlana Gorina. The court’s press office told OVD-Info about the decision.

In August 2024, Gorina was sentenced to six years in a penal colony under charges of organising the activities of an extremist community (part 1, article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). On appeal, the court gave her a suspended six-year sentence with a probation period of four years. The first-instance verdict’s clause requiring her to observe a ban on working with civil society organisations after serving her main sentence was also removed.

For Dubina, who was convicted of participating in the activities of an extremist organisation (part 2, article 282.2 of the Criminal Code), her two-year prison term was replaced with a suspended sentence for the same period. She was given a two-year probation term.

The court’s decision meant Gorina and Dubina were released from the pre-trial detention centre.

Bersenyev, also convicted of participation in an extremist organisation, had his sentence reduced from four years to two years in prison.

According to investigators, from July 2019 to September 2020, two residents of Yekaterinburg—a major city in the Urals—organised a banned group which involved other convicted individuals. They held meetings and videoconferences, produced campaign materials calling on people to submit to the “USSR” authorities, and even issued “decrees.” In order to destabilise the state authorities, the “USSR citizens” assigned themselves positions with names similar to actual posts from the Soviet Union.

Two individuals, including Gorina, were deemed by the court to be “organisers of an extremist group cell” and each sentenced to six years in prison. Bersenyev was sentenced to four years in prison, and another eight “participants” each received two-year prison terms.