A loader from St Petersburg has been sentenced to eight years over posts on a blocked page

56-year-old loader Dmitry Sorokin from St Petersburg was sentenced to eight years in a penal colony over posts on a blocked page on VKontakte. This was reported by Mediazona.

The man was found guilty under articles on public calls for extremism, “fake news” about the military, and justification of terrorism. The reason was 13 posts on his VKontakte profile, including some about “Azov,” the “Russian Volunteer Corps” and the “Freedom of Russia” Legion, as well as about missile strikes on Ukraine. The page was blocked by order of the prosecutor’s office and was inaccessible from inside Russia, but the court decided the St Petersburg resident was publishing to “an unlimited number of people,” as the page could be accessed from abroad or using a VPN.

In court, Sorokin explained that after being blocked he began using the page as a “warehouse” for posts to reread them later. During the hearing, it emerged that security officers used a free VPN to view the page, and at interrogations they claimed to be outraged by the “negativity” of the posts.