A student in Moscow has landed in trouble for saying in a TikTok video that he could not imagine people going three years without bubble tea during WWII’s siege of Leningrad.
Ilya Kostyakov, the accused student, has been charged with rehabilitating Nazism for his comment.
As reported by Radio Liberty, Moscow-born Kostyakov posted a TikTok video on or before Aug. 5 with a caption that says “Think about it... Residents of besieged Leningrad lived for 3 years without bubble tea…”
Originating in Taiwan, bubble tea is a sweet drink usually made with tea, milk, and chewy tapioca pearls drunk through a wide straw that is especially popular among Asian populations.
Bubble tea was not invented until the 1980s, meaning it was not available to those during WWII.
Kostyakov’s video reached Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of Russia’s Safe Internet League, who slammed Kostyakov for his joke on Aug. 6.
“Let me remind you that during the 872 days of the Leningrad Blockade, about 1.5 million city residents died from hunger, cold, disease and bombing,” Mizulina wrote in her Telegram update.
“Such ‘jokes’ are unacceptable – this is a desecration of the memory of those people who died from the inhuman cruelty of the Nazis,” she added.
Russian police detained Kostyakov two days later, and on Monday, Aug. 25, he was charged with the “rehabilitation of Nazism.”
“He is accused of committing a crime under Part 4 of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (humiliation of the honor and dignity of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, committed using the media or information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet),” says a statement by the Moscow Investigative Committee.
The committee said the video “contains information about the humiliation of residents of besieged Leningrad as veterans of the Great Patriotic War,” adding that Kostyakov has “admitted his guilt in full.”
The committee requested preventive measures from the Butyrsky District Court of Moscow, which was issued on the same day as the update.
Russia has cited Kyiv’s alleged ties to neo-Nazism to justify its 2022 full-scale invasion, labeling “denazification” an official war goal – even though President Volodymyr Zelensky, elected with 73% of the vote in the 2019 Ukrainian election, is of Jewish heritage.
Russia’s military buildup over the past decade has also drawn heavily from WWII, framing its invasion of Ukraine as a continuation of the Soviet fight against Nazism.