Andrei Kolesnikov

According to the investigation, in 2021, the man published a comment in Odnoklassniki with "knowingly false information about the activities of the USSR during the war". As Sova notes, in the press release on the initiation of the case, the IC also wrote that the publication contained "denial of the decisive role of the USSR in the victory over Nazi Germany". There is no such wording in the statement about the completion of the investigation.

According to the Sova Centre, the post that Kolesnikov reposted was published a day earlier by a user with the name Vladimir Polchenko. The post referred to the Russian Foreign Ministry's statement that on 17 September 1939, "the Red Army began a liberation campaign on the territory of Poland." The author of the text wrote that in 1939 the USSR entered the Second World War on the side of Germany, participated in the division of Poland, supplied Germany with goods and trained the German military, and after the attack in 1941 began to "whine to the whole world". In addition, the post claimed that the US and UK helped the USSR, so Hitler was "killed by the whole world". In the same publication, Polchenko criticised the "victoriousness" and added that "Russia never defeated fascism": "German Nazism replaced Soviet Nazism" and then strengthened "Russian fascism".

The publication was accompanied by two photographs. The first showed portraits of Hitler and Stalin with the caption that the USSR had entered the war on the side of Germany and jointly "attacked" Poland; the second showed German and Soviet military personnel with the caption "Allies".

On 5 June 2024, Kolesnikov was sentenced to a fine of 500,000 rubles.