Khmelnytskyi City District Court found a man guilty of obstructing the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
This became known from the verdict dated May 12.
A resident of Khmilnyk, Vinnytsia region, in 2023 administered a Telegram group with 294 participants, in which men of conscription age were helped to avoid mobilization. The perpetrator reported the addresses where military personnel of the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center were serving summonses, disrupting the fulfillment of mobilization tasks.
Law enforcement officers found that the account of the group’s administrator was linked to the mobile phone of a 32-year-old man.
In court, the defendant denied the actions imputed to him. He explained that he was a member of many Telegram groups and insisted that he was not the owner of that group and did not create it. Allegedly, someone added him to the group, and he thought the purpose of the group was road assistance; he did not write about the movement of the military and, on the contrary, warned that such information should not be written.
Later, the man agreed that he might have written messages in the group but did not consider himself guilty since he did not create that group. He emphasized that he warned in the group about deleting information regarding the movement of military personnel and equipment, thus supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He viewed the publication in the group of information about the presence of Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center employees at certain addresses as civic cooperation and the exercise of civic rights. Other group members also wrote about the locations of Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center employees, but they were not held criminally responsible, so the defendant considers his case artificially created and the investigation biased.
During a search of the defendant’s phone, an image with a discrediting caption and correspondence regarding the possibility of going abroad were found. Specifically, the man ordered a fake medical certificate with outpatient treatment for himself, expressed an intention to order a fake income/employment certificate, and three fake certificates of university enrollment.
The defendant’s reference to not creating the Telegram group is considered by the court as a means of defense, as the creation of the group is not imputed to him at all.
The defendant is being brought to criminal responsibility for the first time, registered as a private entrepreneur, owns and leases several land plots, is positively characterized at his place of residence, and has a young child under his care.
The court decided that the man deserves a real 3-year imprisonment, as a suspended sentence would not serve his correction and prevention of new crimes.