A resident of Sverdlovsk Region has been sentenced to six years over the comment “Good lad.”

The Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced Pavel Yakovlev, a resident of Nizhniye Sergi in Sverdlovsk region, to six years in a strict regime penal colony. The reason was a comment he left on a news story about a shooting at a military enlistment office. This was reported by Public Press; the case details are available on the court’s website.

On 26 September 2022—a few days after mobilisation began—Ruslan Zinin arrived at the military enlistment office in Ust-Ilimsk, a town in Siberia, and shot military commissar Alexander Eliseev several times. The commissar survived. Yakovlev left a comment under the news post about the incident, which had been published in the “Yekaterinburg | News” group on VKontakte here.

Yakovlev was charged with justifying terrorism (part 2, article 205.2 of the Criminal Code). The case was opened in January this year and he was detained in February.

The convicted man’s defence stated that Pavel did not wish to justify terrorism, and that with his comment, he “simply wanted to positively acknowledge the young man’s visit to the enlistment office and his wish to serve his conscription.”

Yakolev himself said that he wanted to praise Zinin’s abilities, but not the shooting at the enlistment office.