The Main Military Prosecutor’s Office has opened a criminal case against VGTRK military correspondent Alexander Sladkov for discrediting the Armed Forces. The journalist himself reported this on his Telegram channel.
According to him, management “did not let him eat.”
“The Military General Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal case against me for discrediting the Armed Forces. If not Oleg Dobrodeev and the VGTRK team, if it were not for the presidential administration, for me personally it would have been difficult,” – he wrote and added that.
Sladkov recalled the arrests of senior Defense Ministry officials in recent months in corruption cases, and what bloggers have written about them.
“We should have put aside the issue of the lack of resources for the army (which even now is reflected in the lack of many necessary things), and suddenly today it turns out for the rest of society: it was precisely those people in uniform who were very unhappy with the bloggers who turned out to be far from angels. I tell you, half of the former minister’s team is under investigation for theft. They taught us how to act morally and in a majestic manner, but that is what they themselves turned out to be. And they fought against critical bloggers, despite the fact that the president received them four times and at these receptions the bloggers spoke harshly about the topic of big problems in the Russian Ministry of Defense.” – writes Sladkov.
Under the new Minister of Defense, Sladkov notes, the blogger and his colleagues “breathed freely,” their “opportunities have increased significantly.”
The article on discrediting the military (280.3 of the Criminal Code) provides for a maximum prison sentence of seven years. By the beginning of 2024, 81 cases had been opened in Russia under this article, investigators had sent 44 cases to court, and 45 people were involved.
