A Yeysk native was sentenced for messages in Ukrainian.
A military court in Rostov-on-Don found Kuban resident Artem Ekimov guilty of three criminal charges for messages in a chat room.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," in just four months, from early December to late March, courts in southern Russia sentenced at least seven people to prison terms for social media posts. The actual number of such sentences is significantly higher, as not all cases of justifying terrorism are included in public court records.
The Southern District Military Court has been hearing Artem Ekimov's case since November 2025. A resident of the Krasnodar Territory was accused of publicly justifying and promoting terrorism, calling for extremism online, and rehabilitating Nazism.
The 34-year-old Yeysk native was prosecuted for messages he posted in a chat room on September 16, 2023. Law enforcement officials viewed these messages, accessible to an unlimited number of users, as "calls for violent actions against government officials," the Krasnodar Territory Prosecutor's Office reported on April 16.
The messages published by Artem Ekimov were written in Ukrainian. Experts found in them calls for an attempt on the life of the Russian president and for violence against "Russians, Jews, and Poles"; the former was classified as terrorist activity, the latter as extremist. According to the prosecution and the court, the same publications contained "positive assessments of the activities of Nazi criminals," specifically Adolf Hitler and Ukrainians.
The court announced Artem Ekimov's sentence on April 15. "During the court hearing, the defendant Ekimov fully admitted his guilt to the charges brought against him," the court's press service reported on its Telegram channel.
A resident of Kuban was sentenced to five years in a general regime penal colony with a four-year ban on administering websites and internet resources. Caucasian Knot has not yet received any comments from Ekimov or his lawyer regarding his plans to appeal the verdict.
Artem Ekimov was born in Yeysk in July 1992, according to his entry in the Rosfinmonitoring register of terrorists and extremists. His information was added to the list on January 14, according to a Telegram bot tracking updates to the list.
"Caucasian Knot" also reported that a military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Stavropol resident Artur Shamanov to three years in prison, finding his comments on a messenger to be justification and propaganda for terrorism. Shamanov "hoped that Western countries and Russia would start a nuclear war between themselves due to the geopolitical situation, which would help devout Muslims seize the Caucasus lands from Russia," security officials wrote in their administrative reports.
In early April, a 30-year-old resident of Cherkessk was arrested on similar charges. His comments, which included "anti-Russian statements," attracted the attention of counter-extremism operatives.