Minsk resident Dzmitry K. is now collecting money for a lawyer in order to mitigate the verdict in the case he is now appealing. It began with the publication of the photo on Instagram. In the photo, the Hungarian military give weapons to Ukrainian soldiers. Dzmitry commented on the photo with the words of the need to “destroy all Muscovites.”
On May 23, 2019, the Minsk City Court decided to punish the 45-year-old Minsk citizen with three years of penal colony settlement. The judge decided that the man inflamed national discord with his comments. The court made this decision even though Dzmitry’s wife is now pregnant and is on maternity leave and her treatment requires about 1,700 BYN monthly. The verdict has not yet entered into force.
“Shortly before the publication of that photo [October 2017 — Belsat.eu] with a comment, two of my friends, a Chechen and a Ukrainian, were killed at Debaltseve. I freaked out. Yes, I wanted to kill all Muscovites in a row. But in order not to live with hatred, even before this whole story began, I reconsidered my attitude towards the Russians and decided that there could be normal people among them,” Dzmitry told Belsat.eu.
The man does not know how the police found a photo in his Instagram.
“I don’t know who told the police about it or how they monitored it themselves (there was no information about the denunciation in the case file), but somehow they called the police,” says Dzmitry.
“The appeal and the services of a lawyer in the course of 6 meetings will require about 2,000 BYN. I hope that the sentence will be reduced, because I need to feed my family,” explains Dzmitry.
In August 2014, when the conflict in the Donbas was in the active phase, Dzmitry K. appealed to the city police station complaining about the sellers of the Novorossiya flags in Belarus.
