Judge Aleksandr Andreev of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court sentenced 71-year-old Novouralsk resident Viktor Kazakov to one year of forced labor in a case on desecrating symbols of military glory under Part 4 of Article 354.1 of the Russian Criminal Code. The report comes from a Mediazona correspondent.
Prosecutor Mariya Otradnova had asked the court to impose two years in a settlement colony. Kazakov did not admit guilt.
The criminal case stemmed from a post published in the first weeks of the war. It contained two photographs: one showed a wall with the words “No to war!”, while the other showed a memorial to hero cities with a plaque reading “Kyiv”, beneath which unknown people had written “Peremozhe!” in yellow chalk, making the phrase read as “Kyiv will win!”
The post was accompanied by Kazakov’s own text: “Novouralsk! How I love you, my dear! For this alone — for these rays of light from confinement in a dark kingdom. Ukraine will win! Glory to Ukraine!” He deleted that post and several other anti-war publications on May 9, 2022, at the demand of security officers.
Despite removing the posts, Kazakov was fined eight times during 2022 under the article on “discrediting the army.” In the summer of 2025, a criminal case was opened against him, and since October 21 he has been under a travel restriction order.
In his final statement, Kazakov said that when the military invasion began, Novouralsk remained “a city of intelligent, democratically minded, caring people” that still found room in public space to express an “absolute unwillingness to view the world through the optics of a gunsight.”
Mediazona writes that Viktor Kazakov worked all his life at the Urals Electrochemical Combine in Novouralsk, the world’s largest uranium enrichment enterprise. He received the title of honorary atomic worker, served as a city duma deputy in the 1990s, and in the 2010s ran the blog “Novouralsk Free Word,” where he spoke out against the deployment of Russian troops to Syria and Ukraine and protested plans to place nuclear waste in the city. He and his wife are soon to mark their 50th wedding anniversary.