Sofia Burger

According to the court's version, on 23 March 2023, Sofia Burger danced on a grave located in the Vsesvyatsky cemetery in Krasnodar, a southern city in Russia. She made obscene gestures and held a cigarette in her mouth. Her husband took a video of what was happening, and Burger posted the video on her social media page. During the hearing, she explained that in this way she wanted to demonstrate a negative attitude towards Nazism, and her dance and the music used in the video symbolised the necessity to bury this ideology.

At the end of April 2024, the Leninsky District Court found her guilty under the article on insulting the feelings of believers, committed in places intended for divine services, religious rites and ceremonies (part 2 of article 148 of the Criminal Code) and imposed 440 hours of compulsory labour.

Earlier, in June 2023, Burger was fined under the article on demonstration of prohibited symbols (part 1 of article 20.3 of the Administrative Offences Code). The reason was a publication in Instagram: a photo of a children's slide painted in blue-yellow colour, accompanied by a "Ukrainian military patriotic song" about a fighter of an organisation recognised as "extremist" in Russia. In the same month, Burger was ordered to pay 30,000 rubles (US$ 300) under the article on discrediting the Russian army (part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code) because of a video "showing a man against the background of the Kremlin's Senate Palace spitting in the direction of the Kremlin at the moment of an explosion."