Halya Coynash goes on to report: 'Byvshev was first summoned to the Investigative Committee on September 15, 2016 with the deputy head Dmitry Zubov informing him that a ‘check’ was being carried out in connection with publication of the poem. At the time, Byvshev used his right under Article 51 of the Constitution to not testify against himself. The criminal proceedings were initiated on September 30. [...] This is the third prosecution against Byvshev with all of them linked with his criticism of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, including its invasion and annexation of Crimea.'

Coynash writes that the Sova Centre, which monitors abuse of extremism legislation and law enforcement practice, 'reported that an article published in a local paper under the title “There is no place for such patriots in Russia” was totally in the style of the Stalinist fight against cosmopolitanism. The linguistic assessment of the new poem has yet to be made public, but that used for the first conviction was truly surreal. Ludmila Vlasova from the Oryol State University concluded that “the hostile nature of the statements related to Russians in the poem is expressed in expressions regarding Russian state bodies and President Putin (“not one inch of Crimea to Putin’s chekists”).” She asserted that they contain direct and covert calls to Ukrainian patriots to carry out physical and other actions in relation to the enemy – Russians: to meet the enemies like their ancestors did; to prepare and hold weapons in readiness, etc. This, she claimed, meant that the poem “To Ukrainian Patriots” contains statements which denigrate Russians. The Sova Centre disagreed and pointed out that the hostile attitude in the poem was not to Russians as an ethnic group, but to a form of activity.'

Photo of Aleksandr Byvshev: Human Rights in Ukraine