The court will consider the case of a woman from Crimea accused of inciting extremism. She is also being prosecuted for “discrediting” the army.

The Feodosia City Court in Crimea will hear a case of “public calls for extremist activity online” (part 2, article 280 of the Criminal Code) against 62-year-old post worker Irina Vladimirova. Today, the prosecutor’s office approved the indictment and sent the case to court. This was noted by the SOVA research centre.

According to investigators, in 2023, Vladimirova published on social media “calls for violent actions against a group of people on the grounds of origin.”

A month ago, the same court received a case concerning public actions aimed at “discrediting the Russian Armed Forces” (part 1, article 280.3 of the Criminal Code). The reason for this case is still unknown.

Previously, Vladimirova was fined twice under administrative articles for “discrediting the Russian Armed Forces” (part 1, article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences) and once under the article concerning incitement of hatred or enmity (part 1, article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences).

The first two fines, totalling 60,000 roubles (approximately US$670), were issued for posts on social media. The first time, Irina Vladimirova was convicted in April 2022. According to the court, she published a post on Odnoklassniki in which she expressed “disagreement with the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in conducting the military operation on the territory of Ukraine.”

The second fine was issued over messages in Telegram. According to the court, Vladimirova posted comments in the “Chat with Radik” and “Brati Yakovlevi Chat” channels, in Ukrainian. One of these read: “Ukrainian drones should strike Russian civilian objects too. Because until that happens, they [Russians] will continue to revel in the grief and suffering of Ukrainians. Their civilian objects are military objects, so are their homes, there are Russian terrorists hiding there, whom the world has recognised as such.”

In a second message, Vladimirova stated: “We [Ukrainians and Russians] are practically no different. There is just one ‘but’… They [Russians] attacked and are killing.”

Vladimirova did not attend either of the hearings.

The third fine, amounting to 10,000 roubles (approximately US$110) under the hate incitement article, was issued over another Telegram post. The court concluded that Vladimirova posted a comment in a Telegram chat “in which a group of people is negatively characterised based on nationality, language or origin.” The comment appeared under a post about a wounded Russian soldier, “a representative of the indigenous peoples of Eastern Siberia, a Buryat by nationality.”

In court, Vladimirova denied any wrongdoing. She said she had not left the comment, and stated: “my phone is often left unattended at my workplace, so perhaps someone else wrote this in the chat.”

Crimean propaganda figure Alexander Talipov also posted videos featuring Vladimirova after her detention in November 2024. In one of them, the woman apologised for “insulting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”