Comedian Artemy Ostanin sentenced to 5 years and 9 months over jokes
Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court sentenced comedian Artemy Ostanin to five years and nine months in a penal colony, Mediazona’s courtroom correspondent reports.
The prosecutor had sought a sentence of five years and eleven months in a general-regime penal colony and a fine of 100,000 rubles. Ostanin was found guilty of inciting hatred committed by an organized group (Point “v”, Part 2, Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code) and of offending the feelings of believers (Part 1, Article 148) over two jokes.
According to the prosecution, the comedian ‘created an organized criminal group with persons unknown to the investigation’—the group allegedly wrote performance texts, found venues, and carried out video recording.
The prosecution of the comedian began over a stand-up monologue. In the performance, Ostanin spoke about a man with a disability whom he met in a metro underpass and called a ‘legless skateboarder,’ asking him to ‘not go so fast. Members of the pro-government movement ‘Call of the People’ (Zov Naroda) interpreted this as mockery of ‘a warrior who lost his legs in the special military operation’ and filed a denunciation. Ostanin said that his monologue did not mention the ‘special military operation’ and that he was joking about ‘a beggar in the metro who has been riding a skateboard without legs for about 20 years.’
On March 18, 2025, Ostanin was detained in Belarus. The channel Belarusian Silovik published a photo of Ostanin with a meat grinder tucked into the collar of his T-shirt— a reference to another stand-up bit in which he talked about meat grinders that officials give to the mothers of fallen soldiers. The comedian’s dreadlocks were also cut off.
Ostanin later said that on the way to Russia the car stopped in a forest, after which three men beat him using batons and electric shockers. According to his lawyer at the pretrial detention hearing, a forensic examination documented a fractured vertebra, multiple abrasions, bruises, and lung problems.
On March 19, the comedian was placed in pretrial detention in the criminal case—the Investigative Committee interpreted the joke as ‘hostile comments toward persons who have sustained injuries and lost their ability to work.’ At the end of December, an additional charge of offending the feelings of believers was added. The grounds for it was an imaginary dialogue with Christ, also made during a stand-up performance.
