On 9 October 2024, the Russian Supreme Court confirmed a 6-year sentence earlier handed to journalist Mikhail Zharikov on charges of disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army. Zharikov was found guilty for social media publications made in 2021 and 2022 on the liberation of Prague from Nazi German forces in the final days of World War II. The two publications were made respectively on Russian social media platform Vkontakte and on Instagram. In his posts, Zharikov reportedly claimed that Prague was not liberated by the Red Army, as is claimed in official Russian history books, but by local Czech resistance forces and by the Russian Liberation Army, a Russian military force which collaborated with Nazi Germany throughout World War II.
Zharikov was initially detained on 2 June 2023 after live streaming a video on Instagram in which he criticized Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This criticism was however seemingly not the basis for his conviction.