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The Central District Court of Tolyatti has granted a request from the administration of the penal settlement and ordered the transfer of singer Eduard Sharlot to a general regime correctional colony. This was reported by the Samara Region Prosecutor’s Office.
According to the authorities, Sharlot “violated regime requirements” and “encouraged other prisoners to behave in a negative way,” for which he was disciplined several times.
In December 2024, the Samara Regional Court sentenced Sharlot to five and a half years in a penal settlement on charges of insulting religious feelings (Part 1, Article 148 of the Criminal Code) and rehabilitation of Nazism (Part 4, Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code).
At the start of the trial, Sharlot was charged under four articles, but during closing arguments the prosecutor dropped charges of destroying his passport (Part 1, Article 325 of the Criminal Code) and inciting hatred (subparagraph “a,” Part 2, Article 282 of the Criminal Code), citing lack of evidence of a crime.
The charge of insulting religious feelings stemmed from a video in which he nails his military ID, a photo of Patriarch Kirill, and a crucifix made of branches to a tree. He was charged with rehabilitating Nazism because of videos in which he tore apart a St George’s ribbon displayed in the shape of the letter Z, and sang a version of the song “Victory Day” with altered lyrics dedicated to the fall of the rouble’s exchange rate.
Sharlot recorded these videos after leaving Russia. He spoke openly against the war in Ukraine, and dedicated these videos to that stance. In November 2023, the singer returned to Russia. He was immediately detained at Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg. At first, the singer was sentenced to 13 days under an administrative offence for petty hooliganism (Part 1, Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences), and two days later it emerged that a criminal case had been launched.
After being remanded in custody, Sharlot recorded an apology video and wrote to Patriarch Kirill asking for forgiveness. Before sentencing, the singer said he “had been infected with the opposition point of view.”
16:51 The singer’s father, Valery Sharlot, said that in the two months his son spent at Penal Settlement No.1 in Tolyatti (a major city on the Volga), he was accused of 19 regime violations and placed in solitary confinement four times.
The man listed to Daily Storm what the colony regarded as violations:
“He didn’t keep his hands behind his back. There was more than just permitted items in his bedside locker—for example, a vest. He didn’t greet someone. In all, there were 19 such violations. In just two miserable months he was put in the punishment cell four times. He went on hunger strike three times, but it did no good.”
The man visited his son in the colony several times. The latter said that from the very first days, FSIN employees told him directly he would not last long in the penal settlement and should not expect early release on parole.
“They even played back recordings of a conversation I’d had with him two months earlier—he used slang in that conversation and that’s why they put him in solitary for the fourth time,” the singer’s father told the publication Pod’yom.
He noted that other prisoners treated Sharlot normally.
Until the decision to tighten his regime takes effect, the singer will remain in a pre-trial detention center.