Imprisonment for comments and posts has become routine in courts in southern Russia.

Courts in southern Russia have sentenced at least seven people to prison terms in prison over the past four months for social media posts. The actual number of such sentences is significantly higher, as not all terrorism justification cases are included in public court records.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," a military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Dagestani native Magomed Abdurakhmanov on March 31, finding him guilty of promoting terrorism. For two comments left online, Abdurakhmanov was sentenced to three years in a general regime penal colony.

From the beginning of December 2025 to the end of March 2026, the "Caucasian Knot" reported on at least seven sentences handed down by courts in southern Russia in cases of justification of terrorism. This number includes only those cases in which public propaganda of terrorism via the internet was the sole charge.

A significant portion of these cases are heard by the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. On December 18, the court's press service reported that Dagestan resident Omar Ismailov was sentenced to four years in prison for publishing a text justifying terrorist activity on a channel he managed.

On January 14, it was reported that the Temryuk District Court in Krasnodar Krai sentenced 64-year-old Crimean resident Yuri Sysoev to five years in prison for a social media post. Sysoev pleaded not guilty. In late February, it was reported that a 50-year-old Stavropol resident received a two-year prison sentence for a comment on a messenger app – a sentence the military court imposed on her based on her admission of guilt and remorse.

In early March, 29-year-old Stavropol resident Artur Shamanov was sentenced to three years in prison for seven text comments. On March 10, it was reported that an 18-year-old Stavropol resident was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for publishing eight videos on a Telegram channel.

On March 17, a court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced 37-year-old Abkhazian resident Timur Agrba to 5.5 years in prison, finding him guilty of publicly justifying terrorism (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code). According to Russian investigators, the publications created a "heroic image" of Shamil Basayev and other leaders of illegal armed groups in Chechnya. The verdict is unfounded, since the publications did not justify terrorism, but mentioned Shamil Basayev as an officially recognized hero of Abkhazia, the defense indicated.

Court records indicate the mass nature of the sentences

The open part of the card index of the Southern District Military Court contains records of another 38 guilty verdicts under the article on justifying terrorism alone, issued between December 1, 2025 and April 1, 2026 .

Some of the cards are anonymized, but some of the convicted can be found on the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring - in particular, there is a native of Northern Ilya Kutsenko from Ossetia, Magomed Magomadov from Chechnya, Eldar Kankulov from Kabardino-Balkaria, Islam Bytdaev from the Zelenchuksky District of Stavropol (now Karachay-Cherkessia), Muslim Bazayev from Ingushetia, and Abdurakhman Magomedov from Dagestan. The texts of their sentences have not been published, so neither the details of the cases nor the sentences imposed are known.

The stated number of sentences also cannot be considered final - the court file search system states that "not all case categories are subject to publication, and the search result may not display a complete list of cases pending before the court."

The Practice of Pre-Trial Arrests

Prosecution under the article on terrorist propaganda for comments and posts on social media was also widespread in 2025. The portal for judicial and regulatory acts, which publishes individual appellate rulings in anonymized form, contains information about at least seven individuals who were remanded in custody by courts in the North Caucasus and Southern Federal Districts on such charges prior to trial.

For example, on February 28, 2025, the Prikubansky District Court of Krasnodar extended the pretrial detention of a defendant who, according to his lawyer's arguments in the appellate court, "has a clearly expressed developmental delay, did not attend preschool, never attended school, did not receive any education, was not registered with a clinic or military registration and enlistment office, and did not receive a passport."

On April 5, 2025, the Nalchik City Court remanded a man to pretrial detention, accused of justifying terrorism and calling for extremist activity online (Part 2 of Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code carries a sentence of up to five years' imprisonment or forced labor). The lawyer requested a mitigation of his pretrial detention, citing that the defendant, who "suffered from residual encephalopathy since childhood," repented, admitted his guilt, and by the time of his arrest "had ceased all illegal activity," since "more than a year had passed since the last publication."

Also on April 5, the same Nalchik City Court arrested an underage girl, a student at the private medical college "Prizvanie," on similar charges (justification of terrorism and calls for extremist activity). On April 22, the republic's Supreme Court agreed to transfer her to house arrest.

In May 2025, the Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria transferred another minor, previously arrested on similar charges, from a pretrial detention center to house arrest. The accused is a first-year student at the Kabardino-Balkarian Agro-Industrial College from the Chereksky District, who, according to her lawyers, "was barely 16 years old at the time of the incriminated acts." The court took into account that before her arrest, the girl "was looking after her younger siblings" and caring for her mother, who was suffering from cancer; the prosecutor, however, despite these arguments, demanded that she remain in custody.

On April 10, 2025, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnodar arrested a local resident on charges of justifying terrorism. The defense pointed out that he has a pensioner mother and a disabled grandmother as dependents, "he offered no resistance during his arrest, fully admitted his guilt, repented of his actions, and is cooperating with the preliminary investigation."

In July 2025, lawyers requested a mitigation of the pretrial detention measure for a minor Makhachkala resident arrested on charges of justifying terrorism. The suspect's mother offered to act as a personal guarantor for her son in court, but the Supreme Court of Dagestan left the teenager in pretrial detention.

At the end of May, the Sovietsky District Court of Makhachkala remanded a native of the city to pretrial detention on charges of justifying terrorism. She was initially arrested for two months, but her arrest was subsequently extended for an additional month at least twice—on July 24 and August 22. From the partially anonymized appellate ruling, it can be understood that the case concerns Albina Rustamova, whose information was added to the Rosfinmonitoring register of terrorists and extremists in September 2025. The girl was born in Makhachkala in January 2002.

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