An animal rights activist from Saransk has been sentenced to six years because of comments made on Telegram.

The Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced animal rights activist Olga Sofronova-Moskvina from Saransk, a city in central Russia, to six years in a general regime penal colony on charges of inciting extremism (part 2 of article 280 of the Criminal Code) and justifying terrorism (part 2 of article 205.2 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by Mediazona.

The case concerns three comments on Telegram attributed to Sofronova-Moskvina by investigators. Two of them were posted in September 2022 under news about the torture of participants in the ‘Mayakovsky Readings’: ‘Cops should be taken down across the whole country! ’ and ‘When will they start wiping out cops already? How much longer do we have to put up with this?! .’ Another comment was in response to news about the sentence handed down to Kirill Butylin, who was sentenced to 13 years for allegedly setting fire to a military enlistment office: ‘Well done! Let’s support him against the attacks of terrorist Russia! .’

However, Mediazona noted that the case files do not make clear how investigators proved that the account from which the comments were published belonged to Sofronova-Moskvina.

The fact that the animal rights activist was being held in custody became known in May 2025. In March of the same year, she was added to Rosfinmonitoring’s register of ‘terrorists and extremists.’ The project ‘Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial’ considers Sofronova-Moskvina to be a political prisoner.