A Sochi resident was fined for discrediting the military.
A Sochi court fined a local resident for discrediting the armed forces for writing on a banknote with a self-inking stamp. He was also jailed for ten days.
Criminal liability for discrediting the armed forces was introduced on March 4, 2022. Since then, residents of Russia, including those in the North Caucasus and Southern Federal Districts, have been subject to prosecution under Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. It provides for a fine of 30,000 to 100,000 rubles for citizens, and repeat violations within a year result in criminal prosecution.
Officers from the "E" center in Kuban, following a complaint from a bank, identified a 60-year-old Sochi resident who inserted a banknote with inscriptions "discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" into an ATM. The man had written such inscriptions on banknotes of various denominations, the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Krasnodar Krai reported.
According to law enforcement, the man used a stamp from a self-inked stamp. He typed "texts discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation," stamped banknotes, and deposited them twice a month through ATMs in Sochi, Tuapse, and Gelendzhik.
"He sent photographs of the banknotes to the administrator of one of the messenger channels," the department's website noted. The specific content of the inscriptions was not disclosed.
The court fined the man 50,000 rubles under the article on discrediting the military (Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). He was subsequently arrested for ten days under a charge of disobeying police orders (Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses): according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Sochi resident "actively disobeyed" security forces while already in the courthouse where the first report was being heard.
"Caucasian Knot" wrote about other cases of residents of southern Russia being prosecuted under the article on "discrediting the army." For example, in May, a court in Tuapse fined local resident Andrei Kuzmenko under this article for saying that "not enough Russians are being killed."
There is also a known case where a court dismissed a case for discrediting the army, limiting itself to a verbal warning: the Kanevsky District Court of Kuban made this decision in the case of local resident Alexander Maltsev, who was charged with "publicly using obscene language against a participant in the Special Military Operations Command, as well as against the military operation itself."
Georgievsk resident Ilya Gushchin was fined 50,000 rubles in April for a pro-Ukrainian slogan uttered near a church. In court, he stated that he was "joking" and "didn't mean anything bad." In addition, in early April, it became known that a court placed in pretrial detention a 30-year-old resident of the Stavropol Territory, charged with disseminating false information about the Russian armed forces due to comments on a messenger.
Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code was introduced on March 4, 2022, after the start of the Russian operation in Ukraine. This article of the Russian Criminal Code contradicts the Constitution of Russia, as well as basic principles of law, human rights activists stated. "The wording of the article does not allow us to determine in advance which statements are lawful and which are prohibited. A citizen cannot know in advance which of his statements, what information may be considered false in this context," they emphasized.
At the end of 2025, a court in Cherkessk sentenced lawyer and activist Ramazan Mkhtse in absentia to eight years in prison, finding him guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military motivated by political hatred.