Yuri Khovansky will not serve a real term, even if he is convicted. This was announced by the head of the human rights organization "Agora" lawyer Pavel Chikov.

According to him, the 2nd Western District Military Court registered a criminal case against Yuri Khovansky - the court was charged under Part 1 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (justification of terrorism), that is, under a less serious article. Initially, the investigation accused the video blogger of singing a song about the terrorist attack on Dubrovka in 2018, but the defense insisted that the events took place in 2012.

Chikov noted that the statute of limitations for this act had expired, Khovansky would not be subjected to criminal punishment even if found guilty.

Khovansky has been banned from certain activities since December 29, 2021, he is allowed to use the Internet. Prior to that, Khovansky had been in custody for five months.

Witnesses in the case of the blogger were three people who allegedly accidentally heard his song in public places in 2018. Two of them used to work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the testimonies of all three coincide verbatim in places. All three protocols approximately half consist of the same phrases and whole paragraphs. So, at the beginning of the interrogation, each of the three witnesses said: “I am an active Internet user. I also watch videos on YouTube.

All three described Khovansky's song verbatim as follows: “The content of the song was aimed at praising terrorism and terrorist acts. I remember that the song contained lines about the terrorist act in the Nord-Ost theater with obscene admiration for this tragedy. I also remember that the song had lines about killing children and sponsoring new terrorist attacks.”

Each of the interrogated allegedly asked the person, from whose phone he heard Khovansky's song, "what he is watching, who this singer is and why he allows himself to sing such a thing." In each case, the answer sounded identical: “this is an online conference on Skype - in fact, a live broadcast, and the young man is Yuri Khovansky, a popular blogger on YouTube.”

Khovansky's lawyers are sure that the investigation needed additional witnesses to support the version that the song was performed in 2018, and not in 2012. They note that the investigator made a mistake by opening a case outside the statute of limitations, and this mistake "became a trigger for further violations."