Two men in occupied Crimea were fined 40,000 rubles ($400) each for publicly listening to the song “Good evening, we are from Ukraine,” according to Russian court reports cited by independent Russian monitoring group OVD-Info.
The two men were charged with “public defamation of the Russian military” for publicly listening to the song.
In March 2022, Russia passed sweeping censorship laws that severely limited the ability of Russians (and those living in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine) to criticize the war, the Kyiv Independent reported.
The scope of what can be considered criticism is quite broad, because Russians have been arrested simply for holding a white piece of paper, and in this case, for publicly listening to a Ukrainian song.
A year later, in March 2023, Russia tightened laws against “discrediting” the war and increased penalties for it.
The new penalties include a fine of up to 5 million rubles (about $66,450) and up to 15 years in prison.
Source: Hot News
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