A Russian court in Volgograd has detained a 23-year-old woman on suspicion of "rehabilitating Nazism" after she posted a video of herself online mocking a monument to a significant Soviet victory in World War II.
The woman, Alena Agafonova of Samara, was detained on February 9 at a Moscow airport after returning from abroad, the Investigative Committee of the Volgograd region said.
Agafonova will be held in pretrial detention until March 9 and faces up to five years in prison if convicted, the local branch of the committee said. A date for her trial has not been announced.
The video shows her below the 85-meter-high Motherland Calls statue in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. She uses the angle of the camera with the monument in the background to make it look as if she's touching the area around the female figure's breasts with her finger.
Agafonova recorded the video in July 2023 and posted it on Instagram. She subsequently fled Russia after authorities opened a criminal case and placed her on a wanted list.
The Investigative Committee accused her of carrying out "immoral and cynical actions insulting the symbol of the steadfastness of the Soviet people” during World War II. The monument commemorates the Battle of Stalingrad, a decisive Soviet victory against Nazi Germany.
Russian President Vladimir has drawn a parallel between the war in Ukraine and the challenge Moscow faced when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. He has mounted a major crackdown on domestic dissent and behavior that can be construed as unpatriotic since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
In 2014, the year that Russia illegally annexed Crimea, Russia passed a law against the rehabilitation of Nazism, and Putin signed it. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022, Putin has clamped down on the dissemination of anything deemed to be false information regarding the Soviet Union’s activities during World War II and activities such as public desecration of the symbols of the Russia's military glory.
Putin also has outlawed the dissemination of information about Russia’s military in Ukraine that doesn't align with state propaganda, such as the killing of civilians.
The Kremlin has justified the invasion of Ukraine as necessary to de-Nazify the country, which also suffered devastation at the hands of Germany during World War II. Kyiv has rejected the parallels drawn by Putin as an attempt to mask his real motive -- imperial conquest.
The regional Investigative Committee also published a video of Agafonova apologizing for her actions.
“I appeal to all residents of Russia and Volgograd, and I ask no one to do the same things as I did last summer out of my stupidity,” Agafonova says in the video.
Agafonova had already made a public apology, stating that she did not want to “abuse” the monument or “laugh at the history of the country,” but this was not enough to close the case.