A court in Ufa (central Russia) found Ivan Chevtchouk guilty of
“public action intended to discredit the use of Russian armed forces”.
The singer was fined 50,000 rubles (around 800 euros), the court's press service said in a statement.
On May 18, during a concert in Oufa, the 65-year-old rocker hammered home that
"the fatherland is not to be the president's permanent ass-licker"
.
“Now people are being killed in Ukraine, why?
Our guys are dying in Ukraine, why
?
, he launched to the crowd.
Yuri Chevtchouk laments that
"young people from Ukraine and Russia who are dying because of the Napoleonic plans of our Caesar".
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If Yuri Chevtchouk was sentenced to a fine, Russian criminal law provides for such offenses penalties of up to five years in prison in the event of recidivism and aggravating circumstances.
The singer did not attend his hearing on Tuesday due to a coronavirus-related quarantine.
Nevertheless, he transmitted a written declaration via his lawyer Alexandre Peredrouk, in which he underlined
“to have always been against the war, in any country and at any time”.
“All the problems and all the difficulties of a political nature between countries and peoples must be settled through diplomatic means
,” he insisted.
Leader of the rock group DDT, very famous in the former USSR, Yuri Chevtchouk has long denounced Vladimir Putin's policy.
He had notably arrested him in 2010 during a meeting broadcast on television.
He was also one of the leaders of a vast protest movement in Russia in 2011 and 2012, which was suppressed by the Kremlin.
Before the Putin era, Yuri Chevtchouk distinguished himself by his campaign against the first war in Chechnya, between 1994 and 1996.
He had started his career in the 1980s, the last decade of the USSR, gaining popularity thanks to his anti-system songs in this crisis-ridden empire.
When the USSR fell in 1991, Chevtchouk was already a figure in Russian rock.
