Resident of occupied Molochansk in Zaporizhzhia Oblast sentenced to 15 years over social media posts

Viacheslav Nykyforenko, a resident of occupied Molochansk in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast, has been sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment after being convicted on six counts under the Russian Criminal Code over 13 social media posts. He is to serve the first three years in prison. The Southern District Military Court’s press office announced the verdict.

Nykyforenko was convicted of participating in the activities of a terrorist organisation (Article 205.5, Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code) over ‘seven posts covering the activities’ of the Atesh partisan movement. Footage released by the Investigative Committee in March, when it announced that the case had been sent to court, shows an Atesh post being reposted on X (formerly Twitter).

He was also convicted of spreading military ‘fake news’ (Article 207.3, Part 2(e)), public justification of terrorism (Article 205.2, Part 2), public calls for activities directed against state security (Article 280.4, Part 2(c)), public calls for activities directed against state security motivated by hatred (Article 280.4, Part 2(c) and (e)) and public calls for extremist activity (Article 280, Part 2). According to the court, the posts included material about the Russian army blowing up the Kakhovka dam and an attack on police officers in Makhachkala in May 2025, as well as calls ‘to finance the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’ and to kill Russians.

Nykyforenko, 43, was added to the list of ‘terrorists and extremists’ maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, Russia’s financial monitoring agency, in December 2025.