The Leninsky District Court of Krasnodar sentenced Eduard Voskanyants and Artyom Simonyan to 14 days of administrative arrest each. The information was released by the press service of the courts of Krasnodar region.
According to the account presented by the court and police, the young men filmed a video near the Military Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky on Postovaya Street, where one of them stands on Mercedes cars and flexes his biceps.
Earlier that day, the anti-migrant Telegram channel “Mnogonatsional” posted the clip. In its post, the channel described the Krasnodar residents as “Wahhabis” and called the footage a “provocative video.”
About four hours later, the regional Interior Ministry department reported the detention of 19-year-old and 23-year-old residents of Krasnodar. Police also published filmed apologies from the two men and repeated the same wording used by the right-wing channel, likewise calling the clip “provocative.”
The court imposed the arrests under Article 19.3 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses, which covers disobeying a lawful order from a police officer. This indicates that, for now, they were punished not for the video itself filmed near the cathedral, but on a different administrative basis.
The press release published by the Kuban courts’ press service about the hearing’s outcome also used the same video bearing the watermark of the Telegram channel “Mnogonatsional.”