A Russian court sentenced a poet to seven years in prison for writing a text that was interpreted as a call for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was released this Thursday.
In the poem in question, the author, Alexander Byvchev, wished for the emergence in Russia of a new Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who tried to assassinate former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The specialized non-governmental organization (NGO) OVD-Info reported today that a Moscow military court found Alexander Byvchev guilty, on March 19, of “calls for terrorism” and “dissemination of false information” about the Russian Army.
The accused also mentioned this sentence in a letter sent to Russian opponent in exile Anatasya Shevchenko.
According to OVD-Info, Byvchev was accused of a short anti-war poem published on the social network Facebook, which began with the line “In Ukraine missiles are falling” and which ended by addressing his country’s soldiers, waiting for the appearance of a “Russian Staffenberg”.
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg led a failed bombing of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, and was shot once the coup attempt failed.
According to the prosecution, by mentioning Von Stauffenberg’s case, the poet Alexander Byvchev incited the assassination of the Russian President.
During the trial, Byvchev was also accused of having distributed a photograph that showed the destruction of a Ukrainian city where his aunt lived and which was devastated during the Russian army’s attempt to take Kiev, in the spring of 2022.
Alexander Byvchev, 51 years old, lived in a small town in the Russian region of Orel (west) and was a German teacher by training. He has been in pre-trial detention since February 2023 as part of this case, according to OVD-Info.
Since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine, with the pro-Russian uprisings in 2014 in the Donbass (east), the author had already been prosecuted for poems that criticized the Kremlin (Russian presidency). Because of this, he lost his job as a teacher, but was never sentenced to prison.
The news of this conviction comes one day after a Russian court sentenced a documentary filmmaker to three years in prison for publishing messages on social media denouncing massacres attributed to the Moscow Army in Ukraine.
In a statement, the Vyborsky District Court in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, revealed that Vsevolod Korolyov was found guilty of “spreading false information” about the Russian Army.
According to the NGO Memorial, the 36-year-old documentary filmmaker and poet was arrested in July 2022.
Before that, he had produced films about the repression against artist Alexandra Skotchilenko and journalist Maria Ponomarenko, who are serving long prison sentences in Russia for having denounced the offensive launched in February 2022 by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin against Ukraine.
According to the indictment, Korolov published on the Russian social network Vkontakte, between mid-March and mid-April 2022, false messages about “mass murders of civilians” in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha, Borodyanka and Donetsk.
Ukraine accuses Russian forces of having killed hundreds of civilians in Bucha and Borodyanka, on the outskirts of Kiev, when they occupied these locations in the spring of 2022 and then abandoned them to concentrate on the fronts in the east and south of the country.
Although many independent media outlets and NGOs have corroborated and documented these accusations, Moscow denies them, considering them an act and suppressing any criticism of its offensive in Ukraine with fines and prison sentences.
On Tuesday, a court in Volgograd (southwest) sentenced another man accused of “spreading false information” to five years in prison, after publishing messages on the Internet denouncing massacres of civilians in Ukraine.
