A Russian poet who was sentenced to two years in prison for posting an anti-war tirade on his Telegram channel was released from prison on Wednesday, independent news outlet RusNews has reported.
Vyacheslav Malakhov, who was born in Ukraine, was found guilty of “repeatedly discrediting the Russian army” by a Moscow court in October 2024 for a post he authored speaking out against the war in Ukraine, in which he argued that the Russian invasion had violated Christian commandments.
Malakhov had also excoriated Russia’s homophobic law banning so-called “LGBT propaganda” in his post, telling Vladimir Putin “Nobody wants to fuck you in your shrivelled ass, old man, calm down.”
During his trial, Malakhov told the court that he had spent his childhood in Tajikistan, where his father was killed during the Tajik Civil War in the 1990s, after which he and his family came to Russia as refugees. When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Malakhov said he experienced “something akin to a nervous breakdown”.
“I say it hurts me when a person dies, but they tell me it’s politics. I say it hurts me when a person dies, but they tell me it’s ‘discrediting’ [the army],” Malakhov said in court.
Speaking to reporters after his release from prison, Malakhov thanked everyone who had supported him while he was serving his sentence, and described no longer being in prison as like leaving “a parallel reality”.
“It felt like everything went 15 years back in time there,” he said. “It’s time for me to move on.”