52‑year‑old resident of Sakhalin has been accused of justifying terrorism for poems and a collage in which the Motherland Calls is detained by the OMON.
Roman Nazarov, a resident of the city of Poronaysk in the Sakhalin Region, has been charged under Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public justification of terrorism through the media or the internet — up to 7 years in prison) for poems he published on VK, a relative of the man told ASTRA.
In May 2021, Nazarov posted the text “Time to Choose,” which was originally published on the “Stikhi.ru” portal and is devoted to the inevitability of making difficult civic and moral choices.
“Stand up, my brother, and take this step; the decision is yours today. The authorities have declared war on the people, and the choice is simple — to the scaffold or into battle!” — this is how the poem ends (the author is listed as Artur Mukhamed‑Girey), and it is not officially banned in the Russian Federation.
The publication was supplemented with a collage showing “Motherland” from a 1941 propaganda poster being detained by law enforcement officers without insignia on their uniforms.
The second episode in the case is a post from January 2020 featuring a quatrain by critic Boris Yakovlev:
“There are no miracles in nature; there is only one law of salvation, the regime of criminals is overthrown, not ingratiated with.”
“This is my personal opinion, which may differ from yours. If I’m wrong, please correct me,” Nazarov clarified in the publication.
“He was detained on May 18, 2026. It turned out that the case had been opened about a year earlier. All procedural matters were essentially handled behind the scenes. Currently, he remains under house arrest until November 17. The case materials are fabricated,” a relative of the man, who has been prohibited by the investigation from using the internet, told ASTRA.
Nazarov’s defense claims that the FSB and the prosecutor’s office falsified documents in the case “retroactively” in order to extend his house arrest. This is stated in the statement about the commission of a crime, which was sent to the prosecutor of the Sakhalin Region and attached to the case in court regarding the challenge to the preventive measure. The evidence against Nazarov was collected by the operative of the FSB Directorate for the Sakhalin Region, M. R. Yunusov.
Nazarov’s relative emphasizes that during the period described in the criminal case, the defendant’s page was blocked.
During his arrest, Nazarov began to experience health problems, a relative claims:
“We just tried to challenge the house arrest so that he could at least take a walk for two hours a day. But the court refused. Because of this, his health deteriorated. His back started hurting. He needs to walk. He is not allowed to work. He asked to have this restriction lifted, because now he is forced to live on the money of his relatives.” Since June 2026, he has been on the list of terrorists and extremists, and his access to his savings has been restricted.
The investigation supports the conclusions about the criminal nature of Nazarov’s actions with an analysis by experts from the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation (the Sakhalin Forensic Laboratory). Nazarov’s defense presented the court with a conclusion from independent experts from the Moscow “Center for Expertise and Research,” which conducts a scientific and methodological audit of the Ministry of Justice’s expertise. The reviewers state that the conclusions of the government agency are unlawful and unfounded, pointing to the experts’ exceeding their authority and ignoring the linguistic nature of the texts.
Furthermore, the defense claims that the local FSB department acknowledged that the criminal case with the number under which the law enforcement officers ordered an examination by the Ministry of Justice never actually existed.
