A Russian stand-up comedian was sent to a penal colony for almost six years Wednesday for a joke about a war veteran who lost his legs, the latest conviction in a sweeping crackdown on those who question the war in Ukraine.
Moscow-based Artemy Ostanin told a story on stage last year about bumping into a disabled ex-soldier on the metro, who he called a “legless skater.”
Pro-Kremlin figures and media outlets spread a clip of the joke online, calling for the comic to be punished for insulting Russian soldiers wounded in the war in Ukraine.
A Moscow court also found Ostanin guilty of inciting hatred and insulting religious feelings over a separate joke about religion.
“The final sentence for Ostanin is imprisonment for five years and nine months in a general regime penal colony,” judge Olesya Mendeleyeva was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Ostanin, 29, denied that the joke alluded to veterans of the “special military operation” — Moscow’s term for the war in Ukraine.
“I hope no one ever finds themselves in the same situation of brutal legal abuse that I did,” he said in his final statement in court, according to Russia’s independent SOTA media outlet.
The judge who handed down Ostanin’s sentence was sanctioned by the United States Treasury in December 2024 for her role in what the department called “the arbitrary detention” of Moscow city councilor Alexei Gorinov for voicing his opposition to the war against Ukraine.
Anastasia Barashkova / REUTERS
After Ostanin’s arrest last year, he was added to Moscow’s list of terrorists and extremists, labels routinely used by Russia to stifle dissent and target opponents.
Russia has massively ramped up a campaign of silencing critics since launching its offensive on Ukraine in 2022.
Last November, a Russian court sentenced Diana Loginova, an 18-year-old street musician who performed anti-war songs, to jail for a third time.
In 2024, a doctor accused of criticizing the war in Ukraine in front of a patient was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison.
In November 2023, Russia placed Ukrainian singer Susana Jamaladinova on its wanted list for similar alleged crimes. That same month, a Russian court sentenced artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko to seven years in prison for swapping supermarket price tags with antiwar messages.
In April 2023, a Russian court sentenced prominent opposition figure and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in a high-security prison on charges of treason for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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