A Moscow district court has fined 70-year-old Olga Slegina 40,000 rubles (€440) under the article on “discrediting” the Russian army because of her paying a compliment to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a private conversation with an Odesa resident at a health resort in the Russian city of Nalchik, Russian human rights centre Memorial reports.
The court hearing lasted less than five minutes. Slegina was unable to attend it due to severe leg pain, however, the judge refused to postpone the hearing, despite the medical reports confirming Slegina’s claims. The judge proclaimed that treatment is not a valid reason to skip the hearing and that Slegina “isn’t laid up in the ICU”.
In December, the pensioner was on a holiday at the Nalchik health resort where she met a woman from the Ukrainian city of Odesa. They began talking during dinner at the resort’s restaurant.
After the dinner, a waitress walked up to them and Slegina asked her which country she supported — Russia or Ukraine, without ever mentioning the war. The waitress replied saying that Zelensky is a “freak”. Slegina said in response that “Zelensky is a beautiful young man with a good sense of humour; everyone used to laugh at his jokes”. She also asked: “Do Ukrainians not scream ‘Glory to Ukraine’ here [in Kabardino-Balkaria, where Nalchik is located] like they do in Moscow?”
Several days later, a man in civilian clothes came to Slegina’s room and told her that three people had filed complaints against her. The pensioner was taken to a police station and had a protocol drawn up against her.
Memorial notes that after the interrogation the woman signed a document she was unable to read, due to her bad eyesight. According to Slegina, she did not understand what was happening due to the stress she was under and wished “it would all end as soon as possible”. Furthermore, the police officers were hurrying her up, convincing her that they would soon need to go to the court.
The pensioner says that her words were reinterpreted in the protocol — the police officers wrote that she had been screaming “Glory to Ukraine”, “Zelensky is beautiful”, and “expressed her displeasure about the current situation in the country”.
The document also states that she “expressed her support of Ukraine by saying that Ukrainians are glorifying their country while Russian soldiers are fleeing the war”. Slegina thinks that this is the police officers’ interpretation of her saying that people with money are able to go abroad.
