Russian sociologist and prominent left-wing activist Boris Kagarlitsky was released from custody by a court on Tuesday, according to Russian media.
He had been in pre-trial detention since October 2022, having been accused of “publicly justifying terrorism” over a video about the Ukrainian attack on the Crimean Bridge, in which he stated that it was “understandable” that Kiev would want to destroy the structure.
Kagarlitsky distributed the clip through the Rabkor news agency, where he serves as editor-in-chief.
The prosecution demanded 5.5 years in prison for the defendant. The court in Russia's Republic of Komi ultimately found him guilty of making “calls for terrorism” but decided not to jail him, and instead issued the 64-year-old with a 600-thousand-ruble ($6,660) fine, and banned him from administering internet sites for two years.
Kagarlitsky is well known as a sociologist, left-wing theorist and lecturer at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences. He was arrested in July after releasing the video on the Crimean Bridge bombing.
In October 2022, in one of its first major attacks on the structure – which connects southern Russia with the peninsula – Ukraine detonated a truck bomb, killing four people and causing a partial collapse of the road section and a fire on the parallel railway span.
Prosecutors have insisted that Kagarlitsky “discredited the state authorities,” stating that a psychological and linguistic examination of his video had found that it contained an “acknowledgement of the ideology of carrying out an explosion in order to discredit government authorities.”
Kagarlitsky had previously also been included by the Russian Justice Ministry on its list of “foreign agents,” while Rosfinmonitoring – an agency which oversees financial translations to combat money laundering and criminal financing – put the political scientist on its register of extremists and terrorists.
In October, during a speech at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Clublin in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked by a Canadian academic to look into Kagarlitsky’s case.
The Russian leader stated that he “doesn’t really know who this Kagarlitsky is” but promised to examine the situation and give a response. He has since made no public statements regarding the sociologist and the criminal case.