Alexander Nesterenko in court for his sentencing, 19 December 2025. Photo: Mediazona
A Moscow court has sentenced a former lecturer at Russia’s prestigious Bauman State Technical University to three years in prison for “inciting extremism” by including Ukrainian songs in an online playlist, independent news outlet RusNews reported on Friday.
Alexander Nesterenko was originally charged with “inciting hatred or enmity” after posting Ukrainian songs to his personal page on popular Russian social media platform VK. Nesterenko was subsequently also charged with “calling for extremism”, though that charge was dropped in court on Friday, according to RusNews. The prosecutors had requested he receive a four-year prison term.
Prior to his detention in September 2024, Nesterenko had taught philosophy at the Bauman School and was an active member of the liberal opposition party Yabloko, who had twice run in Moscow’s municipal elections.
Nesterenko’s legal woes began when some of his erstwhile students collectively informed on him. One of them, Timofey Yudaev, whom Nesterenko said he didn’t even recognise, was unable to say where the lectures had taken place when asked.
While the case initially referred to five songs, Nesterenko said he only posted three, accusing Russia’s Federal Security Service of posting Our Father Bandera, about a controversial Ukrainian nationalist figure, to his account. Another song, Ukraine Will Win, featuring lyrics about the Bucha massacre in the early days of the war, was dropped from the charge, according to RusNews.
In his closing statement to the court, Nesterenko said that if he was guilty of anything, then it was not having been among those who were the first to be imprisoned by the Russian authorities for their beliefs.
