Yevgeny Bestuzhev, a 63-year-old security guard, political scientist, and publicist, is standing trial in St. Petersburg, facing up to ten years in prison. He is accused of spreading "fakes" about the Russian army due to 27 posts about the war in Ukraine, which include reposts of Ukrainian songs and social media entries made by St. Petersburg deputies.
An engineer by education, Yevgeny Bestuzhev calls himself a political scientist and publicist. Before his arrest, he worked as a security guard. Yevgeny became interested in politics back in the 1990s when he participated in creating a political club at the shipbuilding plant where he worked at that time and has been politically active since then.
According to Bestuzhev's lawyer from OVD-Info, Sergey Podolsky, Yevgeny came to the attention of the Federal Security Service (FSB) when intelligence agencies were studying materials from Ukrainian media, as Bestuzhev had given them interviews. A criminal case against Yevgeny Bestuzhev was initiated on September 15, 2022. On November 7, right after Yevgeny returned from Georgia where he had spent two months, his dwellings were searched. After the searches, he was arrested even though he has numerous health problems, suffering from ischemic heart disease and stage 3 chronic hypertension, and sent to a pre-trial detention center. Yevgeny has repeatedly complained about his health condition; the trips from the detention center to the court are very hard for him. In mid-March, a few months after his arrest, he had a heart attack in the detention center. However, despite this, the judge of the Kalinin District Court, Tatiana Alkhazova, continues to refuse to change the preventive measure to a softer one.
Yevgeny Bestuzhev is accused of spreading "fakes" about the Russian army, motivated by political hatred or enmity (Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code), due to posts published on VKontakte. His page is now blocked at the request of the General Prosecutor's Office.
The indictment in Bestuzhev's case consists of 71 pages. It several times lists all his "criminal" statements. The "knowingly false nature" of these statements is not detailed, it is only said that they do not coincide with materials about the special military operation (SVO) published by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and also that in February and March 2022, Russia was acting in fulfillment of the treaties of friendship and cooperation with the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR).
From the very beginning, Bestuzhev has stated that he does not agree with the accusation of spreading "fakes" about the Russian Armed Forces. In November 2022, he said that he "did not engage in spreading deliberately false information, as they are accusing me of, because the information is deliberately false when it is fabricated, and I was not involved in fabricating it".
During the hearing on July 5, 2023, Bestuzhev once again said that he didn’t agree with the accusation and that his posts were criticism of politics, not the army. "I don't understand at all what they specifically accuse me of because I did not spread any deliberately false information. My publications only contained my assessment - that's first. Second, they contained criticism not of the armed forces, but of politics. After all, the army and politics are different things. The army does not make political decisions," Bestuzhev said in court. "Most of my publications were written before the adoption of this law and even before the beginning of the “special operation” (as Russian authorities call the war in Ukraine). I have been professionally engaged in the development of democracy all my life, I always wanted my country to be a civilized European state, to follow and develop in this paradigm, and what started happening, of course, was a big shock to me, and I somehow reacted to it."
According to Sergey Podolsky, the prosecution cannot make the charges more specific. A large part of the publications, which the investigation found to contain discrediting information about the Russian army, were posted before the appearance of the law on "fakes" in Russia. Furthermore, the posts included not only Bestuzhev's statements but also references to Novaya Gazeta, Rosbalt, Youtube videos with Ukrainian songs ("Lenta za lentoyu" by Taras Chubay, "Slava Ukraini" by Orest Lyuty, etc.), publications with UN data, speeches of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as reposts of statements of deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky and Alexander Shishlov.
“The charges include just about anything. I don't understand why Ukraine’s anthem and all the other posts that the prosecutor cited in the indictment can today spread any deliberately false information about the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” Podolsky said, referring to the song about Germany's attack on the USSR in 1941 "On the twenty-second of June, precisely at four o'clock", which became an unofficial anthem of Ukraine after Russian invasion and was reposted by Bestuzhev. “There are no statements of facts in the indictment. I believe that in this case, defense is impossible since the charges are not specific," Podolsky stated, adding that "The prosecutor can't explain which specific events or facts took place: we don't have either the time or event of the crime itself, so I believe that it is not possible to express an attitude towards the charges now, as there are no charges as such."

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