A Moscow law student was sentenced to 150 hours of public service for sending anti-Semitic text messages aired on local television in May. The Interfax news agency reported that Andrei Kachanov, 22, was sentenced by a Moscow-area court Monday.
Kachanov sent a series of SMS messages to the Radonezh Municipal Television and Radio Company attacking Jews and other non-ethnic Russians during a May 9 broadcast celebrating Victory Day. The messages were displayed during the broadcast.
In a statement on its Web site, the Moscow Region Prosecutor’s office called the messages “an affront to the national dignity of representatives of the Jewish ethnicity and non-Russians as a whole.”
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