Judge Dmitry Khamadiev is presiding. Some case materials will be heard behind closed doors at the request of defence lawyer Sergei Badamshin, Mediazona's correspondent reported from the courtroom.
The charge falls under Part 2, Article 207.3(d) of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers the spread of knowingly false information about the armed forces.
The case centres on a post titled "Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin," published on Remeslo's Telegram channel, in which the blogger condemned Putin's policies, the war in Ukraine and the economic damage it has caused, Ekho reported.
Speaking before the hearing, Remeslo described conditions in the pre-trial detention centre as "excellent" and said he did not regret the experience. He said his cellmates had turned out to be "wonderful people," and that many innocent and worthy people are held in the prison.
"If I had the chance to go back to 17.03.2026, I would do roughly the same thing, except for the wording about a war criminal," Remeslo said. He said that "from a purely formal point of view" the wording had been imprecise.
In court the blogger pleaded not guilty. SOTAvision reported that the hearing watched Remeslo's interview on Ksenia Sobchak's channel in full, played at roughly 1.4 to 1.6 times speed, but the session still ran for more than an hour.
Remeslo said he had "not changed his position on any of the points voiced in the interview." He said he was exercising his constitutional right to criticise state authorities and defending freedom of speech. "And I plan to keep doing it, whatever sentence they ask for," he said.
The post marked the start of a series of critical publications by Remeslo about the war and the Russian authorities. The blogger spent a month in a psychiatric hospital and, after his release, continued to speak out against what was happening.
Ilya Remeslo is known for denouncing Alexei Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Foundation. It was on Remeslo's complaint that a criminal case was opened against Navalny for "slander" of veteran Ignat Artemenko. Mikhail Kostenko, a pensioner and the injured party in the fraud case against the politician over donations, also said that he had not written the statement against Navalny himself; Remeslo, a friend of his son-in-law, had written it.
The blogger does not conceal that he worked with the presidential administration. In the spring he gave an interview to Ksenia Sobchak in which he said he received 8 million rubles a year through structures belonging to Konstantin Kostin, former head of the administration's domestic policy department.