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The Gatchina City Court has sentenced 51-year-old Dmitry Bogmut to seven years in a general regime penal colony on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army (subparagraph “d” of part 2, article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). SOTAvision reports this.

The prosecutor had requested eight years in a penal colony for him.

In his final statement, the physicist spoke about his anti-war stance:

“I was born in 1975, my golden years were during Gorbachev’s perestroika and the ’90s. <…> I constantly recall demonstrations with the slogan ‘Peace to the world! ’ The peace-loving agenda that has been promoted all these years is what I am trying to convey to the court. I cannot accept or understand the current glorification of war. <…> Any war brings only blood, suffering and death.”

The court has been hearing Bogmut’s case since January 2025. He was accused of publishing anti-war material in 2023 from his workplace at the St Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics, which is part of the Kurchatov Institute.

The St Petersburg resident was charged with writing over a hundred comments. Among them: “Look what your russnya is doing in Ukraine: levelling cities, bombing civilians,” “How many thousands of lives has Putin already laid down in Ukraine? How many more will die?,” “Zelensky faces a tough task, he leads a country at war; the whole nation stands behind him,” and “Russnya loves murderers and rapists.”

In court, Bogmut stated that he had partly incriminated himself under pressure from a cellmate who claimed to have contacts in the FSB. “[He] was pushing me to confess. Aggressively insisted I should love the ‘Russian world,’ love Putin,” the physicist said. Bogmut does not plead guilty now.

During the trial, on certain days, men in camouflage came to court and filled all the seats in the courtroom. In addition, TASS, quoting a source in law enforcement, published the names of activists who attended the hearings to support Bogmut. The agency cited its source, who called them a “group of pro-Ukrainian activists.” After this, activists and journalists whose names were published began receiving threats.

  • Bogmut was detained in April 2024. He has been in custody since then. Six months after his arrest, his support group reported that he had lost 20 kilograms and now weighs 50 kilograms at a height of 182 cm.
  • Before his detention, Bogmut worked as a laboratory technician in the Neutron Physico-Chemical Research Department at the St Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics in Gatchina, a town near St Petersburg.