A Russian court in the Siberian city of Chita has fined a local man for speaking to the press about the fine he had previously received for sharing a dream he had about Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the independent Mediazona news website reported Tuesday.
Ivan Losev was fined 70,000 rubles ($986) for “discrediting” the Russian armed forces after giving an interview to the BBC Russian Service in December and commenting in a video to exiled Russian news channel Dozhd about his initial run-in with the law.
Losev told both outlets about the 30,000-ruble ($423) fine he received in December for an Instagram post in which he recounted a dream he'd had about Zelensky, according to RFE/RL affiliate Sibir.Realii.
“I had a dream today that I had been drafted and taken to a training camp, and then the Ukrainian armed forces led by Zelensky stormed in,” Losev wrote on Instagram in December, adding that he had then cheered Zelensky in the dream, shouting out the popular Ukrainian slogan “Glory to the Heroes.”
Last week, his mother Nelli Loseva was also fined for “discrediting” the Russian army after she liked a post condemning the invasion on social media.
The Russian authorities have opened nearly 5,600 administrative cases of “discrediting” the Russian military's actions since Moscow invaded Ukraine almost a year ago, according to the police-monitoring group OVD-Info.
Russia passed a law in March that makes sharing information about the war in Ukraine that differs from the Kremlin’s narrative punishable with fines or jail time.
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