Moscow bar employee sentenced to three years in prison for posting Easter hookah video

A Moscow court sentenced Ksenia Belousova, an employee of a Moscow bar, to three years and 25 days in prison on charges of offending the religious feelings of believers, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona and the Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported. She was taken into custody in the courtroom.

At the hearing, it emerged that Belousova had received a three-year suspended sentence on drug charges in 2025 — the specific charge was not disclosed. Prosecutors asked the court to revoke the 27-year-old’s suspended sentence and, combining the penalties, impose a real prison term.

On the new charge, the court sentenced her to 200 hours of community service, then combined that with the previous sentence and imposed a real term of three years and 25 days.

According to the indictment, on Easter — “a holiday of exceptional significance” — Belousova posted a video on her Instagram showing a hookah with a bowl shaped like a kulich, one of the “most recognizable symbols” of the holiday. Investigators concluded that she had wanted to “draw public attention to her own professionalism as a hookah master.”

To give the post a “demonstratively mocking” character, she added a comment creating an “evaluative form,” investigators said. The caption read: “Even Christ would come back from the dead after this.” In the video, Ksenia can be heard telling colleagues at the bar that a client had asked her to make him such a hookah and had gone out to buy the kulich himself.

The case against her was opened on April 13. The video was flagged by Z-blogger Vladislav Pozdnyakov and by pro-government Telegram channels. Belousova deleted the post and published an apology shortly afterward, but a criminal case for offending the religious feelings of believers (Part 1 of Article 148 of the Criminal Code) was opened against her anyway. Police also released a video of her apology.

In her final statement, Belousova said: “I am a believer myself, as is my family. I regularly attend church and value and respect everything connected with the church. My family — my mother, my father, and my brother — are participants in the SVO. I ask that their state of health be taken into consideration.”

In April 2026, the Investigative Committee opened another case on offending the feelings of believers. The suspect was a resident of the Murino district near St. Petersburg. Telegram channels reported that the woman had posted a photo of a kulich with a dildo.