Photo: social media
A court in the Russian city of Samara, in the Volga region, has sentenced singer Eduard Sharlot to five and a half years in a penal colony for “rehabilitating Nazism” and “insulting the feelings of believers”, state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Friday.
The singer, known simply as Sharlot, burned his Russian passport in June 2023 and made an on-camera statement expressing support for Ukraine. He was detained on arrival when flying in to St. Petersburg from the Armenian capital Yerevan in November of that year.
In another video, Sharlot filmed himself nailing a portrait of Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to a cross.
In addition to “rehabilitating Nazism” and “insulting the feelings of believers”, Sharlot was also charged with “inciting hatred” and “deliberately destroying an official document”.
In July, Sharlot’s lawyer published a video of his client apologising to Patriarch Kirill and all Orthodox believers for insulting the religion. Sharlot had previously written a repentant letter to the patriarch in January. The court ignored all these gestures, however, and extended his pretrial detention.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said that he had “forgiven” the singer in November and asked the court to drop the charges of “insulting the feelings of believers” against him, but the court went ahead with the sentence.
