A Russian court handed down a suspended sentence to 21-year-old Higher School of Economics (HSE) student and libertarian YouTube personality Egor Zhukov.
Zhukov stands accused of issuing public calls for extremism: Prosecutors have argued that his videos on nonviolent resistance were motivated by “political hatred and enmity to the constitutional structure extant in the Russian Federation” as well as a desire to destabilize the country’s social and political order.
Zhukov’s case, one of many that were brought forward during this summer’s wave of election protests in Moscow, has attracted widespread attention throughout the Russian opposition. Many of the videoblogger’s fellow HSE students as well as veteran journalists have openly supported him, calling the state’s reaction to his videos dangerously unfounded and expressing fear at the precedent his case may set. The editors-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and Ekho Moskvy even submitted documents in court expressing their willingness to employ Zhukov as a journalist, according to the Riga-based online newspaper Meduza.
After leaving the courtroom, Zhukov declared that his sentence is politically motivated: "I hope we all understand that this has grown into politics. If they think this will make me end civic activism,oh, come on!" declared the student.
