A year ago, the Criminal Code introduced liability for fakes about the Russian Armed Forces. How the courts have considered cases during this time and what circumstances were taken into account — in RBC’s material. Last year, on March 4, President Vladimir Putin signed a law introducing criminal liability for public dissemination of fakes about the use of the Russian Armed Forces. Two new articles appeared in the Criminal Code — 207.3 and 280.3 (criminal punishment under the latter comes if a citizen has already been punished for discrediting the army in an administrative order within a year before). For the whole of last year, according to the General Prosecutor’s Office, 187 crimes under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code were registered, 23 of them — outside Russia.

The article provides for punishment in the form of imprisonment of up to three years or up to 15 years, if the crime caused grave consequences. Some of the cases have been brought to the courts, and according to RBC’s calculations based on court statistics, at least 27 defendants under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code have already been sentenced. At the time of this article’s publication, the court websites published the texts of the judicial acts of nine cases — RBC has studied the descriptive and motivational parts of these convictions. I highly recommend studying the materials at the link https://www.rbc.ru/politics/04/03/2023/640202409a7947e857992894.

There you can familiarize yourself with the ferocity and cruelty of the so-called law enforcement practice towards Russian citizens who have opinions different from those of the authorities.