‘Politically unreliable’ 61-year-old amateur radio enthusiast is sentenced to three years in prison for spreading ‘fakes’ about Russian soldiers looting, raping, and killing Ukrainians

[We cannot verify the authenticity of this story but are providing it as a means of information disseminating as a result from the Russia/Ukraine conflict. – GW]

A Vologda court sentenced 61-year-old Vladimir Rumyantsev, who works as a stoker, to three years in prison on charges of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army.

Rumyantsev was found guilty of spreading fakes “for reasons related to political hatred or enmity related to any social group.”

According to the judge, Rumyantsev posted six video clips “with deliberately false information about representatives of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine looting, killing, and raping civilians, and destroying hospitals, maternity hospitals, schools, and kindergartens” on his VKontakte page. In addition, during a week in April 2022, he “broadcast on a certain radio frequency” similar “known false information.”

The news outlet Sever.Realii reports that Rumyantsev has worked his whole life in various roles at factories; he was also a trolley-bus operator and, more recently, a boiler worker. One of his hobbies is radio engineering; a few years ago, he started broadcasting on his own frequency. His radio transmitter, which he bought on AliExpress, broadcasts a signal a few dozen meters (several hundred feet) from his apartment. Before the full-scale war, Rumyantsev rebroadcast music and radio plays, but after February 24, he started to send out political material from anti-war channels — including Meduza, Radio Liberty, and Ekho Moskvy.