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A Russian court sentenced a 68-year-old man who swam across the Nemunas River from Kaliningrad to Lithuania in an attempt to seek asylum to six years in prison, according to Lithuanian media Lrytas.
He was sentenced to six years in a maximum-security penal colony and barred from administering websites or online channels for three years following his release.
The man, identified by Russian media as Igor Yuryevich Odintsov, was convicted by the Baltic Fleet Military Court of “publicly justifying terrorism,” according to the court. He also holds “a negative attitude towards the state authorities of the Russian Federation” and is opposing Moscow’s war in Ukraine — what Moscow calls a “special military operation,” according to the court’s press release.
Court proceedings were suspended on September 17 after Odintsov went into hiding, according to Russian media ruwest.ru. That was also the day he crossed the Nemunas River and reached the Lithuanian side.
The head of the Lithuanian community in Kaliningrad, Sigitas Šamborskis, told Lrytas that he knew the man and said Odintsov had been trying to escape persecution.
“He had a case opened against him, which is why he swam across the Nemunas. He wanted to save himself,” Šamborskis said.
The man allegedly told Lithuanian authorities that he was fleeing Russia because of persecution over his activity on social media. But after assessing the circumstances, “inconsistent” information provided by the man and “information concerning the threat posed by this person if he were to enter the EU”, Lithuanian authorities decided to return him, a spokesperson for Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service, Giedrius Mišutis, said last month.
Šamborskis added that the Lithuanian side did not have sufficient grounds to keep him, as the Russian court case had not yet been concluded.
The 68-year-old was detained four days later, on September 21, and the court handed down its verdict at the next hearing, on September 30.