A Russian military court has sentenced Gevorg Grigoryan, a 23-year-old dual Armenian and Russian citizen, to nine and a half years in a general-regime penal colony over comments he posted online, reports Zartonk Media, citing Mediazona.
The Russian outlet learned of the sentence from an acquaintance of Grigoryan who asked not to be named. The Second Eastern District Military Court in Chita handed it down, and the Caucasian Knot reported the verdict was read on October 20 by Judge Zyryanov. Prosecutors had asked for 10 years.
Grigoryan was born in Yerevan in 2003 and turned 23 in June. He lived in Zabaykalsky Krai, in Russia’s far east.
He was tried on charges of spreading military “fakes,” rehabilitating Nazism, and calls to “terrorism” and “extremism.” The charges doubled as the case progressed. He was initially accused only of rehabilitating Nazism and inciting hatred, with the case set for the Central District Court of Chita, and it was sent to the military court in August.
Charges of spreading military “fakes” fall under Article 207.3 of the Russian criminal code, which Vladimir Putin signed into law on March 4, 2022, eight days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It carries up to 15 years in prison, and Human Rights Watch said at the time that it criminalized independent war reporting and anti-war protest.
Mediazona described the case as arising from anti-Russian comments Grigoryan posted on Armenian online platforms. The Caucasian Knot reported that investigators dated the comments to September 2023.
Mediazona quoted two of them. In one he wrote that Hitler “should have destroyed them all.” In another he wrote that after Ukraine, Russian troops would enter Armenia, a sentence Mediazona rendered with the words “Russian troops” supplied for clarity.
The reporting does not establish who he meant in the first. The investigation characterized the comments as humiliating a group of people on national grounds without naming the group.
The acquaintance said Grigoryan wrote the comments out of anger that Russia had not come to Armenia’s aid during Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive on Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), which followed a nine-month blockade and ethnically cleansed the region of its entire Armenian population of 120,000. Artsakh has remained under Azerbaijani occupation since.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said when it announced his detention that Grigoryan had posted comments containing offensive formulations and had openly supported Nazi ideology.
He was detained in June 2025 and placed under house arrest, and was never moved to a pre-trial detention facility even after the charges were toughened. Those close to him kept hoping he would avoid prison because of it, the acquaintance said, including after prosecutors asked for 10 years. Grigoryan admitted guilt and expressed remorse.
The Investigative Committee for Zabaykalsky Krai announced his detention in August 2025, and in December 2025 his details were entered into Rosfinmonitoring’s register of terrorists and extremists, according to the Caucasian Knot.
