The Balashovsky District Court sent Khopersky village deputy Oleg Nepein, a defendant in the case of military “fakes” (Part 1 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), for compulsory psychiatric treatment. Sota reports.
Nepein will undergo compulsory treatment for three months at the regional clinical psychiatric hospital named after Hagia Sophia. In June of this year, the man was already sent to this clinic for a psychiatric examination.
In its decision, the court, in particular, noted that Nepein suffers from a chronic mental disorder in the form of paranoid schizophrenia, which manifested itself “long before the crime was committed,” so he could not be held responsible for his actions.
Nepein’s wife was appointed as his representative during the trial, and the hearing was postponed until September 21, 2023.
Oleg Nepein was detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center in mid-May of this year, since the deputy did not appear in court in the case brought against him regarding military “fakes.” His wife said that the activist did not hide, but deliberately did not go to court. Nepein had previously said that he considered himself “a Man, not an individual,” so “morons who don’t understand this difference cannot judge him.” In early May, the court arrested the man in absentia due to failure to appear and put him on the wanted list.
The reason for initiating a case against Nepein was eight of his comments about the war in Ukraine, which he wrote in April 2022 in the open telegram chat “Saratov-Engels”. According to investigators, the deputy “in the form of a statement” wrote “deliberately false information” that the Russian army was “suffering heavy losses” and its main goal “is to plunder the territories of Ukraine.”
In particular, Nepein wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is in charge of an operation that is aimed at destroying the Ukrainian people,” his actions “led to the death of twenty thousand Russians,” and Russian military personnel “committed negative (violent) actions against local residents of the city of Bucha and shot 410 civilians.”
On December 1, 2022, Nepein’s house was searched and all his equipment was confiscated.
Nepein told Idel.Realities that his actions did not constitute a crime. “I am a living person and I live according to my conscience. No one has the right to judge my conscience. I will continue to tell the truth, which I draw from reliable sources. I consider the sources of the Ministry of Defense unreliable,” he said.
Oleg Nepein is a current deputy of the Khoper municipality. Four years earlier, he made a hiking trip to the governor of the Saratov region demanding the resignation of the head of the Balashov region, Elena Shcherbakova. The man was unable to meet with the head of the region – he was stopped by security at the checkpoint of the regional government. Despite the failure, Shcherbakova nevertheless left her post four months later.
In Balashov, Nepein organized a community, for which he was immediately fined one thousand rubles for refusing to provide the prosecutor’s office with information about the community members. Last year, he was fined another thousand rubles: in one of the local telegram channels, a user under the nickname “Oleg Nepein” posted an image of a swastika and calls to go to the protest march, which Nepein allegedly organized. Until 2018, he organized all protest rallies in the Balashovsky district, including in support of the politician Alexei Navalny.
