© RFE/RLAnton Nosik
Comment: Putin has stated publicly that the Russian government will do everything necessary to fight extremism. Russia continues to match their words with deeds by fining this troll! It's too bad he didn't get jail time.
A Moscow court has found prominent Russian-Israeli blogger and web pioneer Anton Nosik guilty of extremism and fined him half a million rubles ($8,000) over a blog post titled "Wipe Syria Off The Face Of The Earth".
The Presnensky district court ruled that Nosik had incited hatred or hostility toward Syrians in his October 1, 2015, post, but the court declined to give him a prison sentence because of "mitigating circumstances."
The judge noted that Nosik is the father of a small child and does not have a criminal record. Prosecutors had asked for Nosik to be jailed for two years.
Nosik denied the charge of extremism throughout his trial, but stood by his blog post, which was published after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes in Syria on September 30, 2015.
In his blog post, Nosik said he "warmly welcomes" any bombing in Syria regardless of the loss of civilian life or infrastructure because he deems Syria a threat to Israel.
After the trial on October 3, he told Interfax he intended to appeal his fine.
What was that recent comment made by one spokes person,
“Extremist groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which could include attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities. Russia will continue to send troops home in body bags, and will continue to lose resources, perhaps even aircraft,” John Kirby, the State Department’s spokesperson, told reporters at Wednesday’s press briefing.
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Could this also be interpreted extremist language against one country by another, albeit with a diplomatic floss.