A teacher in Russia's Siberia region has been fined for "discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation" because he reacted to some anti-war social media posts with emojis.
Aleksei Argunov told North.Realities of RFE/RL's Russian Service on July 25 that he was fined 30,000 rubles ($520) for using a sad emoji in the comments section of a social media post on the conviction of a politician who wrote that it “hurt him to watch Russian people kill Ukrainians, and Ukrainians forced to kill Russians.”
Argunov said that the charges also included an emoji he left on a video published on YouTube in March by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger that urges Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion of Ukraine. He left an emoji in the comments section that indicated his approval of Schwarzenegger's comments.
"The police themselves understood that it was stupid" to write up the charges, said Argunov, a philosophy and history teacher in the city of Barnaul, about 200 kilometers south of Novosibirsk.
Two days later, a court found him guilty in what appears to be the first conviction of someone for leaving an emoji in the comments section of a post by someone else.
Since launching his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Putin has clamped down hard on any dissent against the war.
In March, he signed bills into law that effectively criminalize any criticism of the war or actions of Russian soldiers. Russian citizens now face up to 10 years in prison for distributing "false news" about military operations and up to 15 years for “discrediting” the nation’s armed forces.
Since the laws were approved, several Russians -- including some elected officials -- have been found guilty of posting anti-war items on social media.