An elderly man from Sverdlovsk Oblast has been given a suspended sentence for posting comments criticising Stalin.

The Sverdlovsk Regional Court has given 75-year-old Nikolai Dolgushin, an elderly man from the settlement of Tsementny, a suspended sentence of one year and two months. This was reported by Mediazona.

Dolgushin was tried under charges of “rehabilitating Nazism on the Internet” (subparagraph “v,” part 2, article 354.1 of the Criminal Code). The case was opened over two comments he posted on Odnoklassniki in September 2024 and February 2024. The comments read: “The Second World War was started by the dictator and murderer Stalin” and “You’re lying, Russian pig, the murderer and dictator Stalin declared war on peaceful Poland.”

The court also banned Dolgushin from using the Internet for a year and a half and ordered him to register with a psychiatrist so he would attend an outpatient treatment course. The judge noted that this course of treatment had been recommended by an expert assessment.

The prosecutor had requested that Dolgushin be sentenced to a year and a half in a penal settlement.

The case against Nikolai Dolgushin was launched in March this year. In early August, the case began to be heard in court.

According to Mediazona, at the time the case was opened, Dolgushin’s page on Odnoklassniki was called “LDPR Zhirinovsky.” He had the same name on his VKontakte page. Investigators found that before the case was launched, Dolgushin often changed his account names, including to: “Zhirinovsky,” “Patriot ‘RDK,’” “Legion Patriots,” “Legion ‘LSR,’” “Party of LDPR Patriots.”

Dolgushin did not admit guilt in the case, saying that he did not write the comments and that his Odnoklassniki account could have been hacked.

• In May, the Nevyansk City Court in Sverdlovsk Oblast—a region in the Urals—fined Dolgushin 30,000 roubles (US$330) under the article on “discrediting the army” (article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences). The reason was a post on Odnoklassniki which, according to the court, contained statements aimed at “undermining the authority of the Russian Armed Forces.” Dolgushin had previously been fined under the same article—the court considered this an aggravating circumstance. In court, Dolgushin stated he uses Odnoklassniki only to find friends and to share folk medicine recipes and that his account may have been hacked.