Russian YouTuber Yury Dud facing misdemeanor charge in ‘drug propaganda’ case

A Moscow court is set to consider an administrative case against Russian YouTuber Yury Dud for alleged “drug propaganda.”

According to the case file on the Zyuzinsky District Court’s website, Dud is facing a misdemeanor charge for promoting drugs using the Internet (under Russian Administrative Code article 6.13, section 1.1). This carries a maximum penalty of 1.5 million rubles ($20,900) in fines. A court date has yet to be scheduled for the hearing.

In April, the “Safe Internet League” filed a complaint about “drug propaganda” on Dud’s YouTube show VDud. Following the results of an initial probe, the police opened an administrative case, but officials didn’t identify the offending content at the time. 

According to Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of the Safe Internet League, two expert analyses carried out within the framework of the case confirmed that Dud’s interview with Ukrainian YouTuber Ivan Rudskyi (EeOneGuy) and Russian rapper Alisher Morgenshtern contained drug propaganda.

On June 3, the Zyuzinsky District Court fined Russian rapper Morgenshtern 100,000 rubles (about $1,400) on a similar misdemeanor charge. The court ruled that that Morgenshtern’s music videos for “Rozovoe vino – 2” and “Family” promoted drugs. The rapper’s lawyer maintained that three of the four linguistic analyses conducted within the framework of the case didn’t find evidence of drug propaganda.