"Our government started this: Putin and his gang. Our government claims to want to fight nationalists, but bombs shopping centers. In Bucha, peaceful civilians were shot by our soldiers from Buryatia and Dagestan, for no reason at all. People are beginning to hate all of this. It all needs to be stopped somehow."
This is what Moscow resident Yuri Kokhovets said in April 2022 during a street interview by Radio Liberty. Soon after, a criminal case was opened against him under the article on military "fakes." Throughout the investigation and trial, Kokhovets was under a travel restriction. Two years later, Moscow’s Ostankinsky Court sentenced him to five years of forced labor.
This decision did not satisfy either the defense or the prosecution. Lawyer Elena Sheremetieva insisted on her client's acquittal. At the same time, the prosecutor considered the initial punishment too lenient and requested that Kokhovets be sentenced to 5.5 years of actual imprisonment, emphasizing that he had committed the offense during the "special operation."
On September 17, 2024, the court reviewed Yuri Kokhovets' case again. In his final statement, the defendant said that at the time of the street interview, he was unaware of the existence of the penal article on military "fakes", and described the first instance court's decision as "quite wise," asking for the sentence not to be harsher. However, the panel of judges, led by Judge Nikishina, ignored Kokhovets' request and instead sent him to five years in a general-regime colony.

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