Blogger Nozdrinov's advocate claims ignoring defence's arguments by court

The arguments that the defence of Alexander Nozdrinov, a Krasnodar blogger, brought in the appeal were ignored, said Alexei Avanesyan, his advocate.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Alexander Nozdrinov, a journalist and a blogger, was sentenced to 8.5 years of freedom deprivation within a criminal case for spreading fake news about the Russian Army. His relatives link the prosecution with his civic position and blame the court of being biased, since it ignored the proofs of Nozdrinov's innocence presented by his defence. On February 19, the court of appeal upheld the verdict.

The advocate, Alexei Avanesyan, has noted "the negative practices that may further spread throughout the country."

According to his version, the appeal contained some arguments that were ignored by the court and the prosecutor. In particular, "investigators failed to prove that the information given by Alexander in his post was false." The post contained a photo of a building in Kyiv and claimed that it was damaged during hostilities. However, the post didn't specify who had damaged the building.

The advocate Avanesyan has noted that Nozdrinov, if it was he, who had placed the post in his Telegram channel, didn't know that he was committing a crime, since the law, according to which criminal liability was introduced for such acts, was published in the "Rossiyskaya Gazeta", to which Alexander was a subscriber as a veteran of military operations in Chechnya, only on March 9, 2023. "Of course, the law appeared on the Internet on March 4, but it is unlikely that all Russian citizens should monitor the Internet in order to read the new laws," the advocate has stated.