A school security guard from St Petersburg faces a proposed seven-year prison sentence over posts about the war.

Seven years in prison have been requested for St Petersburg resident Aleksandr Glushkin in a case concerning alleged “military fakes” (subparagraph d, part 2, article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code). This was reported by the MR7 Telegram channel.

The prosecutor has also requested that Glushkin be banned from administering websites and publishing on the internet for two years.

During the court hearing, Glushkin said that the post about Bucha—the publication he is accused over—was sent to him by a stranger: “They added me as a friend and sent me the post. I went to their page, saw the post and noticed that it hadn’t been blocked,” the defendant said.

The key witness in the case was Olga Savelyeva, an employee at the school where Glushkin worked as a security guard. According to Savelyeva’s testimony, she discovered posts about events in the city of Bucha on Glushkin’s VKontakte page. She reported this to the school administration.

In January, the Nevsky District Court of St Petersburg began to consider the case. It was opened in February 2024, at which point Glushkin was placed under a preventative restriction limiting certain activities. Later, the investigation decided to toughen the measure, and the court sent him to a pretrial detention centre, where he remains to this day.

Glushkin has two underage children. After his arrest, it became harder for his family to cope with day-to-day and financial difficulties.

He also suffers from a cardiovascular illness and was previously hospitalised. Glushkin said that he needs to take medication regularly, but in the detention centre he was given his medicines only once, and not in full. Meanwhile, his wife is not always able to bring the medicine packages to him.