A Moscow court on April 22 sentenced a 38-year-old man to five years of so-called forced labor for condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine during an on-street interview in July 2022 with a reporter from RFE/RL.
The Ostankino district court also banned Yury Kokhovets from administering websites for four years.
The punishment defined as "forced labor" in Russia means that convicts will not serve their terms in prison, but instead may stay home and be sent to work at an industrial facility in their towns, cities, or sent to other places as designated by the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN).
A certain portion of their salaries are deducted by the State Treasury.
His lawyer, Yelena Sheremetyeva, said the court ruled that Kokhovets will be paying 10 percent of his monthly salary to the state.
Kokhovets was detained in March 2023 and charged with spreading false information about Russia's armed forces. He was later released but ordered not to leave Moscow.
In July 2022, Kokhovets was approached by an RFE/RL journalist who asked him if he thought a detente between Russia and NATO countries was needed.
"Of course we need (de-escalation), but it all depends on our government. It is our government that started it all.... It is Russia who created all these problems," Kokhovets told RFE/RL. "I don't see any problems with NATO, it is not planning to attack anyone."
He added that Russian forces had killed civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha "for no reason at all." Moscow denies accusations it has committed war crimes in Ukraine.
Kokhovets pleaded partially guilty, denying that his statements during the interview with RFE/RL were hatred-based. He also stated at the trial that he was exercising his constitutional right to freely express his opinion while talking with the RFE/RL journalist.
His lawyer also said at the trial that her client had no hatred toward anyone when he talked to RFE/RL.
According to Sheremetyeva, the "proof" of her client's guilt was based purely on a forensic linguistic examination of Kokhovets's speech, which according to her, had been held with gross violations, namely that the two people who studied his statements are not state-licensed linguists, she said.
The linguistic forensics study was carried out by math teacher Natalya Kryukova and interpreter Aleksandr Tarasov, who also conducted similar linguistic examinations in the cases of shutting down the Memorial Human Rights Center in 2021 and imprisonment of Memorial's co-chairman, Oleg Orlov, in February this year.