A Russian comedian was sentenced in Moscow on Wednesday to nearly six years in prison for joking about a man who had lost his legs after stepping on a mine, with the authorities saying he had mocked veterans.
The comedian, Artemy Ostanin, was convicted of “inciting hatred” by making the joke during a stand-up performance in March, according to the Russian Investigative Committee, a government investigative agency. A clip of the performance was widely disseminated by military bloggers and nationalist groups, who called it insulting to soldiers. Mr. Ostanin was arrested days later in Belarus after fleeing Russia.
The joke involved a man who had lost his legs in a mine blast and who was pushing himself through a metro station in Moscow on a skateboard, according to footage of Mr. Ostanin’s performance. He said the man had run over his foot and startled him. Though he did not say the disabled man was a former soldier, the joke did not seem well received and few people in the audience laughed.
The joke turned Mr. Ostanin, a little-known comedian, into a target of some of Russia’s pro-military and nationalist groups. One blogger, Alexy Zhivov, published a clip of Mr. Ostanin’s joke to his Telegram account, and described the performance as joking “gleefully about disabled veterans” of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In an interview with a Russian reporter, Mr. Ostanin denied that the joke was about Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. He said there was no mention of the war in his joke, and “the rest is just fantasies of bloggers, and to my surprise, federal media.”
Mr. Ostanin’s sentencing was the latest example of efforts by the Kremlin to punish those who speak out against the military and the war effort in Ukraine. Strict censorship laws make it illegal to “discredit” the military, and thousands have been arrested by the Russian government for even the subtlest signs of dissent.
During the sentencing on Wednesday, Mr. Ostanin was also convicted of insulting religious believers during a public comedy routine about a week earlier from the performance that included the skateboarder joke, according to the Russian Investigative Committee.
Eva Merkacheva, a member of Russia’s Human Rights Council, said Mr. Ostanin had been beaten by the Belarusian police, who broke his vertebra, according to his lawyer. The police in Belarus deny this happened.
In court, Mr. Ostanin apologized to those offended by his jokes, and he said his treatment during his arrest was punishment enough. But when asked at the end of his sentencing if he understood the charges, he dismissed the proceedings.
Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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