A court in Russia on Wednesday sentenced a Russian American national to three and a half years in a penal colony after he had criticized the country, its leadership and its war in Ukraine on social media.
Yuri Malev, 60, identified in court as a security guard at the MatchPoint sports complex in Brooklyn, was arrested in Russia last December. He was charged with “rehabilitating Nazism” over two social media posts that expressed “obvious disrespect for society” and “insulted the memory of World War II” and its veterans, the court said.
Mr. Malev, the court said, admitted guilt and was sentenced in an expedited proceeding.
While it is common for people who criticize the war and Russian officials to be prosecuted in the country, the sentence against Mr. Malev, a first-time offender, was unusually harsh, his lawyer and a relative said.
Mr. Malev joins a list of American nationals currently in Russian custody, including Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal; Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine; and Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
The detentions of American nationals in Russia in recent years have raised fears that the Kremlin is seeking to use U.S. citizens as bargaining chips to be exchanged for Russian individuals held in the West.
According to his lawyer, Ruslan N. Aidamirov, Mr. Malev had been expected to get a much more lenient sentence, and he said that Mr. Malev was very “depressed” by the court’s decision.
Mr. Aidamirov said in a phone interview that he believed the case against Mr. Malev “was not politically motivated” because he was not a political activist. He added that Mr. Malev was charged after a Russian woman complained to the police about his posts.
A graduate of the prestigious law school at St. Petersburg State University, Mr. Malev had lived in the United States since 1997, according to Mark Livshitz, his uncle. He visited Russia every year, but was arrested after the military’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“He hid it from us,” Mr. Livshitz said of the trip to Russia, adding that Mr. Malev enjoyed spending time in the country with his former classmates and other friends. “He knew that I would not let him go there.”
Mr. Livshitz, 79, said Mr. Malev was “very worried” about the war in Ukraine. He described him as “a shy and harmless” man.
Mr. Malev, who had already been in pretrial detention for nearly six months, will spend his sentence in a penal colony with relatively relaxed regulations. But Mr. Livshitz said it was hard for him to imagine how Mr. Malev, who has recently survived a serious illness, would endure the ordeal.
Mr. Livshitz said that he and his wife had wanted to go to Russia to support Mr. Malev, but that their daughter “took away their passports” fearing that they might get into legal trouble there, too.
He said that the family was devastated by the sentence, which had not been expected because Mr. Malev admitted his guilt.
“It is terrible, terrible,” Mr. Livshitz said.
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