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The Basmanny District Court of Moscow has sentenced blogger Michael Naki in absentia to five years in prison on charges of incitement to activities against state security (para. “v” Part 2, Article 280.4 of the Criminal Code). Taking into account a previous conviction, the court has handed down a final sentence of 14 years in a general regime penal colony. This was reported by “Mediazona.”
The court has also banned the blogger from administering websites for five years. The prosecutor had requested the same 14 years in total across all charges, but in a maximum security colony.
The criminal case is linked to a video published on Naki’s YouTube channel on 7 May 2024, the day of the presidential inauguration. Investigators claimed it constituted “incitement to overthrow the government in Russia, including by physically eliminating Putin,” as well as expressed a negative attitude towards “the use of the Russian army.” On that day, Naki released a video entitled: “Now Putin can be eliminated. The day when Putin stopped being president.”
In 2023, Naki was also sentenced in absentia to 11 years in a general regime colony on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army (Part 2, Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). Together with Ruslan Leviev, founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team, he was targeted because of a video on the ninth day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in which, among other things, they discussed the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Naki is outside Russia. In May 2022 he was arrested in absentia, and in September of the same year, the Ministry of Justice added the blogger to the register of “foreign agents.”