A resident of Moscow was sentenced to 14 days in jail, after he showed a symbol of the Ukrainian Azov regiment on his smartphone, according to the Prague-based Russian language channel Current Time.
The court in Moscow stated that it had found Yury Samoilov guilty of distributing extremist material after a fellow passenger on a subway train reported him as using the outlawed symbol as a screensaver.
Samoilov stated in court that he had installed the image in order to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Other files that would "discredit" the Russian army were reportedly also found on his phone.
Samoilov further stated that he was initially neutral about the war in Ukraine, but after watching a number of YouTube channels and a Ukrainian Russian-language TV channel FREEDOM, he changed his views.
The Azov Regiment
Russia's supreme court designated Ukraine's Azov Regiment as a terrorist group in August of 2022. Russia has regularly cited Azov in support of its assertion that Ukraine is controlled by "fascists".
While the Azov Batallion, the predecessor of the Azov Regiment, was heavily associated with neo-Nazi and far-right symbolism and ideologies, the Azov Regiment today insists that it has largely purged those sentiments from the regiment.
Russian President Putin earlier this month signed a bill that would criminalize discrediting any participants involved in the invasion of Ukraine into law, Russian state-controlled TASS said.
The law previously criminalized criticism of the Russian armed forces. However, the new legislation would punish any public actions against members of the Special Military Operation units (SVO) including volunteer units.
Tzvi Joffre and Reuters contributed to this story.