On 18 March 2024, a court in the Russian city of Ivanovo sentenced Sergey Kustov, chief editor of local broadcaster Bars, to 10 days of imprisonment on charges of disobeying a police officer, according to his outlet, multiple media reports, and a court statement.
Police detained Kustov, who was reporting on the crash of a Russian military aircraft in Ivanovo, a region northeast of Moscow, on March 12, for four hours before releasing him; his phone was also briefly confiscated. The reason of the crash was unclear, as was the potential involvement of the military plane in the war in Ukraine.
According to the court statement, Kustov “showed disobedience to military police officers, namely, he did not comply with repeated lawful demands of military police officers to leave the area of the IL-76 [Russian military aircraft] crash site.” Kustov denied that the military police made any demands, saying that “if they had, he would certainly have complied with them,” his outlet reported.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on March 12 that one of the aircraft’s engines caught fire, resulting in the death of all 15 people aboard, according to Russian state news agency TASS.