Shchus Aleksey Vasilevich

In April 2024, a criminal case was initiated in Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, for 'fakes' about the Russian army against a 46-year-old local resident, Alexei Shchus. The reason for the criminal prosecution was anti-war posts on VKontakte published in 2022. In the first one, published in March 2022, the engineer talks about the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol. In the same month, he wrote a second post that spoke about the beatings of peaceful residents of Kherson by Russian soldiers. In September of the same year, he published a third post about how the occupiers, after retreating from Izium, did not have time to get rid of the bodies of those killed, placed in temporary burial grounds. The man was placed under a non-leave obligation for the duration of the investigation. In mid-August 2024, the charges against Shchus were increased - he was additionally charged with 'illegal manufacture of weapons with a muzzle energy exceeding 7.5 J'. The weapon he was accused of making was a slingshot modification. The man was sent into custody. January 17, 2025, the Hostinsky District Court of Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, found Alexey Shchus guilty and sentenced him to 5.5 years in a general regime colony. On April 2, 2025, the Krasnodar Regional Court left the sentence unchanged.