Deferred prison sentence for calls to armed uprising

At the end of December the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv convicted a resident of the Odessa region of encroaching upon Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability (Article 110 of the Criminal Code).

The court found the 43-year-old guilty of distributing material with calls to action aimed at changing the borders of the country and at undermining the order established by the Ukrainian Constitution, together with incitement of ethnic and religious enmity.

The convicted man had used computer and copying equipment in a Kyiv computer club to prepare around 7 thousand leaflets and brochures in the name of a non-existent organization called the Russian Orthodox-Monarchist Party (militant).

He distributed the material with titles like “Jewish fascism” and “Russia’s Crown of Thorns” in crowded places in Kyiv. The material contains calls to eliminate Ukraine’s independent, to armed uprising to change the borders of the country by united with Belarus and Russia in one monarchist union.  All of the material called for armed revolt and the physical elimination in the process of Jewish people.

Members of the public alerted the Security Service [SBU] to the man’s activity. In court the defendant fully admitted his guilt and, given that he showed remorse, received a four-year sentence deferred if he does not commit another crime over a two-year period.