Artemy Ostanin in court in Moscow, 4 February 2026. Photo: Mediazona
A Moscow court has sentenced Russian stand-up comedian Artemy Ostanin to five years and nine months in prison for jokes which “aroused hatred towards participants in the special military operation” and “insulted the feelings of believers”, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Wednesday.
Ostanin’s legal problems began in March when a joke he told about a man who had lost both his legs and moved around on a skateboard on the Moscow metro came to the attention of pro-war blogger Alexey Zhivov, who informed his Telegram channel’s 100,000 subscribers that a stand-up comedian in Moscow was “joking gleefully” about disabled veterans of the war in Ukraine, an accusation Ostanin has always denied.
Ultranationalist movement Zov Naroda, which is best known for denouncing public figures it sees as ideologically “unsound” to the Russian authorities, then contacted Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, to demand a “legal appraisal” of the incident.
The comedian attempted to flee the country through Belarus but was detained in the country’s capital, Minsk, by police and subjected to brutal beatings. Last month, Ostanin described in court being tasered and beaten with batons, and the guards cutting his hair and threatening to slit his throat, details which the presiding judge determined were irrelevant to the case.
In December, after being detained in Moscow for several months following his return from Minsk, a further charge was added to Ostanin’s docket for “insulting the feelings of believers” over a joke in one of his shows about a conversation with Jesus, in a clip that was posted online by someone the Prosecutor’s Office referred to as his “accomplices”.
