Search
The poet and author of the “Pre-Revolutionary Adviser” group, Vyacheslav Malakhov, has been released from a correctional facility in Tula Region after two years in custody.
“There are two people’s articles now—228 and 337. Some wanted to have a good time, others didn’t want to fight. <…> Here, there are mostly refuseniks, military personnel, servicepeople and stormtroopers, as well as medics,” he told an OVD-Info correspondent about the people at the penal colony.
A case for repeat “discrediting” (Part 1, Article 280.3 of the Russian Criminal Code) was opened against Malakhov over a post in his Telegram channel on 8 September 2023, in which he discussed the hypocrisy of the Russian authorities. The post began: “Nobody wants to fuck you in your withered arse, old man, relax already and calm down.” On 31 January, the young man’s home was searched, and two days later, a court put him in pre-trial detention.
Later, a second post from the poet’s Telegram channel, dated 12 September 2023, was added to the indictment. In this message, Malakhov compared officials’ contradictory statements about the return of Russians who had left to avoid mobilisation to Russia’s actions towards Ukraine:
“Russia: you want to attack us and kill us.
Ukraine: we don’t want anything of the sort.
Russia: attacks Ukraine.
Ukraine: now we want to attack you and kill you.
Russia: that’s fine now!”
In October 2024, the Khamovniki District Court in Moscow sentenced Malakhov to two years in a general regime penal colony.
In August 2023, the Savyolovsky District Court in Moscow fined the young man 30,000 rubles (about US$340) under the article on “discrediting the army” (Part 1, Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code) over posts on VKontakte “containing negative assessments of the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
Also in August of that year, Malakhov told the “Team Against Torture” that he had spent three weeks in a psychiatric hospital. Before that, police removed him from a train and brought him to a police station; a day later, officers took him to a hospital under the pretext of a medical examination. There, under threat of violence, he was forced to sign hospital admission papers.
After Malakhov refused, he was strapped to a bed by his hands and feet, and a police officer pressed their knee against his chest. Malakhov spent several days in this restrained position. During that time he was repeatedly injected and forced to take unknown pills.