Russias Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a five-year prison sentence against the prominent anti-war sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky on charges of justifying terrorism, state media reported.Kagarlitsky, 65, was initiallyfined 600,000 rubles ($6,600) in December over a since-deleted YouTube video about the 2022 Crimea bridge explosion.
In February, a military court of appeals reversed that ruling andsentenced him to five years in prison after an appeal by prosecutors.During Wednesdays appeal hearing, Kagarlitsky saidnaming the offending YouTube video Explosive Congratulations for Mostik the Cat in reference to a real cat that lived on the Crimea bridge was an extremely unfortunate joke.
However, he argued that his jail term was disproportionate to the offense, according to the independent news outlet Sotavision.The state-run TASS news agency reported that Kagarlitsky's defense lawyers asked Russias Supreme Court toreplace his jail term with a fine of up to 1 million rubles ($11,200), arguing that the sociologist had cooperated with investigators and was not a flight risk.
But the Supreme Court sided with military prosecutors.Kagarlitskys attorney Sergei Yerokhov told TASS he plans to appeal the verdict with Russias Constitutional Court on the grounds that his client received excessive punishment.Kagarlitsky, a well-known academic and Marxist theorist who has spoken out against Moscows invasion of Ukraine, chose to remain in the country despite the Kremlins crackdown on dissent.Russian authorities labeled Kagarlitskys Institute of Globalization and Social Movements a foreign agent in 2018.
The academic was himself designated a foreign agent in 2022.
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