Sergei Stepanov, a journalist and Christian missionary, made the following post on his VK page: “Dear compatriots: our army is conducting full-scale military operations in another country, it is dropping bombs and rockets on the cities of our neighbouring Ukraine. We call on the authorities of our country to stop this senseless bloodshed.” After the Russian Federation legislation introducing responsibility for discrediting the Russian army and the actions of state institutions abroad came into power, Stepanov deleted his VK page. However, the Oktyabrsky district court of Tambov fined him 40,000 Russian rubles for discrediting the army. A linguistic examination was conducted by Shcherbak Antonina Semyonovna, a professor at Tambov State University, in March 2022.
