Uglich resident convicted over enlistment office arson given new sentence, pushing back his release by around six years
Political prisoner Denis Popov was handed a new sentence on 8 September over comments on YouTube that he allegedly wrote while in a penal colony, SOTAvision reports.
Denis Popov was sentenced to nine years on two counts of public calls for terrorism (Article 205.2, Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code). Taking into account the remainder of his first sentence, he was given a total of 10 years, to run from the day the second verdict comes into force. Under the first case, he had four years left to serve and was due for release in 2030. His release date has shifted to 2036.
The prosecution alleged that Denis Popov, while at Penal Colony No. 2 in Rybinsk, left two comments from the account ‘Andrei Andrei’ under the videos ‘A Rat Attacked’ and ‘Putin Against Jews and Nazis’. He allegedly called for the destruction of bridges, arson attacks on military enlistment offices, and the assassination of Vladimir Putin.
Denis Popov himself said that after his release from the punishment cell in January 2026, the colony administration sent him to the medical unit. His lawyer stressed that Denis had no illnesses at the time. Another inmate in the same medical unit let him use a phone, and paid for the mobile phone service and VPN himself. Denis Popov denies writing the comments he has been charged over.
The court rejected the defence’s motions to request the materials from the internal inquiry into the discovery of the phone, to examine the phone itself, and to obtain itemised records for the phone number used.
Denis Popov was detained in the summer of 2022. He was charged with attempted arson of the military enlistment office serving Uglich and Myshkin districts, as well as with calling on others to ‘beat the shit out of’ United Russia members.
Denis Popov had been preparing for the arson attack together with a person using the pseudonym ‘Anriyko’, who turned out to be a law enforcement officer. In our assessment, it is highly likely that ‘Anriyko’ carried out illegal entrapment, a practice prohibited by law.
In 2023, Denis Popov was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, the first three of which were to be served in prison. After serving the prison portion of his sentence at Vladimir Central Prison, he was transferred to Penal Colony No. 5 in Nizhny Novgorod, and from there to Penal Colony No. 2 in Rybinsk.
