Russian high schooler faces a long time in imprison over social media post criticizing war in Ukraine
Olesya Krivtsova wears an anti-Putin tattoo on one lower leg and a wristband tracking her every move on the other. The 19-year-old from Russia’s Arkhangelsk region had to wear a gadget while he was under house arrest after he was charged over social media posts that experts say undermine Russia’s armed forces and legitimize terrorism. Russian authorities included Krivtsova on a list of fearmakers and radicals, by standards by ISIS, al Qaeda, and the Taliban, for posting Instagram stories surrounding an explosion at a Crimean bridge in October that also criticized Russia for invading Ukraine.
Krivtsova, a student at Northern (Ice) Government College in the northwestern city of Arkhangelsk, is also facing criminal charges for undermining the Russian armed forces for making what should be a simple repost of the war in student chats at the Russian social organization VK. Currently, Krivtsova is being held under house arrest in her mother’s attic in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk region, outlawed. from online and utilizing other forms of communication.
Kichin said the child may face up to three years in prison for belittling the Russian armed forces and up to seven years in prison under the psychological warfare defense article. However, Krivtsova’s legal defense relied on lesser discipline such as a fine.
Autonomous human rights screen OVD-Info says at least 61 cases were started in Russia in 2022 on charges of defense of fear-based bullying on the web, with 26 cases leading to convictions so far. Olesya’s mother, Natalya Krivtsova, said the government was trying to warn the public, with her daughter affected by “public flogging” for not keeping her own secrets.
“We live within the Arkhangelsk region and it is usually an endless location but also inaccessible from the center. There are no more protests in Arkhangelsk, so they are trying to stop everything that was purged at an early stage,” Natalya Krivtsova told CNN. A local Communist Party chief, Alexander Novikov, freely booed the young man on state television, calling him a hoax who should have been sent to the front in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region so he could “look into the eye” of the military fighting as part of the Arkhangelsk battalion. This is not the first time that Olesya Krivtsova has met with specialists to broadcast her visions freely . Last May, he faced regulatory charges for undermining the Russian armed forces by spreading anti-war propaganda.
Things got even more real when he was denounced for undermining the Russian armed forces on social media last October. According to Krivtsova’s legal counsel, the repeated offense under the same article turned into a criminal case. “He harbored an increased sense of equality, which made his life difficult. Failure to remain silent at this time is a grave sin within the Russian Federation,” his mother told CNN.
In agreement with Natalya Krivtsova, police stormed into a flat on 26 December where his daughter lived with his wife Ilya, forced the young men to lie face down on the ground and purportedly paralyzed them with heavy hammers, in what officials said was a “hello” from Wagner Bunch, a private military temp headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin. CNN has reached out to the state police in Arkhangelsk for comment.
“Olesya was so shocked because she saw a video where a prisoner was butchered with a sledgehammer,” her mother told CNN. In the famous video alluded to by Natalya Krivtsova, the soldiers of fortune from the Wagner Gather , who effectively initiated the prisoners , apparently executed ex-convict Yevgeny Nuzhin with a heavy hammer after he attempted to escape his post. The video’s description says: “The traitors get the conventional and primordial Wagnerian punishment.” “The state has some unconventional approaches: prisoners go to war, and children go to jail,” he said.
