A court in Vologda refused, at the request of the Federal Penitentiary Service, to toughen the punishment for the person involved in the case concerning anti-war videos.

The Vologda City Court refused to replace compulsory labour with a real prison sentence for Sergey Mazin. This was reported by his OVD-Info lawyer, Sergey Tikhonov.

The request to toughen the punishment was made by Albert Talantsev, the head of Correctional Centre No. 2. He stated that on 14 January, Mazin was declared a persistent violator.

Before this, the convicted person had received four penalties. In December 2025, he was reprimanded after a package of pink salmon preserves, expired by two days, was found in the refrigerator. Mazin said the fish was not his. According to his lawyer, Federal Penitentiary Service staff were unable to prove it belonged to him.

He received two more penalties on 10 January. One was for filming on his phone in the process of submitting a statement to the duty office, and the other for refusing to explain the filming. For this, Mazin received 14 days in the punishment cell and a reprimand respectively.

The last penalty, which was also a reprimand, was issued on 13 January—because when Federal Penitentiary Service staff entered, Mazin did not state how many convicted people were in the punishment cell or what was happening according to the daily schedule. The convicted person said he did not know he was supposed to report this.

• In December 2024, the court sentenced Mazin to one and a half years of compulsory labour, finding him guilty of repeatedly 'discrediting' the army (Part 1, Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code). He was convicted for posting several videos criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Mazin has been serving his sentence since February 2025. His term will end on 2 August 2026.