The Military Court of Appeal upheld the sentence of 60-year-old Tver region resident Larisa Mikhay, who had previously been given six years in prison over comments about the Federal Tax Service. Sotavision reported this from the courtroom.
Earlier, in March 2026, the 2nd Western District Military Court imposed the same term on her. She was convicted under articles on public calls for terrorism and public calls for extremism. The exact wording of the comments has not been disclosed in publicly available materials. It is only known that they were posted on a social network in 2023.
According to Sotavision, her emotional reaction was prompted by the fact that the tax inspectorate in the town of Klin mistakenly charged her a debt of 500,000 rubles. The issue was later resolved, and the pensioner reportedly forgot about the comments. However, in 2025 she was detained.
In court, Mikhay said that during the pretrial investigation she was questioned for 15 hours and was not allowed to go to the restroom. After that, she signed testimony prepared by the investigator; according to her, her court-appointed lawyer insisted on it. She later withdrew those initial statements. She said she had written the angry comment because of her family’s severe emotional and financial hardship after the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am an elderly person, I wrote it and forgot… My complaints were about a specific tax office, not the Federal Tax Service as a whole, and there was no criminal intent. For three years there have been no victims — the tax service was not harmed by the comments. Only my family and I suffered,” Mikhay told the court.
On appeal, the defense asked for witness testimony to be re-examined and argued that the defendant had not been allowed to fully review the case materials. In her closing remarks, Mikhay also asked for the sentence to be replaced with a fine or compulsory labor, noting that she was not receiving necessary medication in pretrial detention. The court rejected that request and left the sentence unchanged.