On 3 May 2023, a court in Kasimov, in Russia’s Ryazan region, found local journalist Sergey Yerzhenkov guilty of vandalism and sentenced him to an eight-month ban on leaving the town, due to his participation in an earlier anti-war protest. According to the Russian service of RFE/RL, the court claimed Yerzhenkov insulted the Russian president, vandalized a monument, disapproved of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and caused material damage to the state. Activist Sergey Skoreev, the organizer of the protest Yerzhenkov was at, was sentenced to the same penalty as the journalist.
In March 2022, Skoreev and Yerzhenkov met in front of a monument in Kasimov, on which Skoreev wrote the name of the Russian president accompanied with a Russian swear word. Yerzhenkov claimed he was only filming the event, and that the words were written with water washable paint. The journalist linked the ban on leaving Kasimov to the fact that he had received a humanitarian visa to live in Germany with his family, given that he could no longer benefit from the visa due to the ban.
UPDATE: On September 21, Russian media reported that Yerzhenkov had received a second warning from authorities on alleged violations of the conditions of his partial house arrest, which the journalist denies having committed. In the event of a third violation, authorities would have the possibility to send Yerzhenkov to a penal colony, Russian media reported.