Man who played Pokémon Go in Russian church faces prison time

‘RELIGIOUS HATRED’

AMY B WANG Last summer, Ruslan Sokolovsky entered the imposing Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg, a city about 1,600 kilometres east of Moscow. The Russian Orthodox church holds special meaning for some, because it was supposedly built on the site where the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, was murdered along with his family.

But Sokolovsky wasn't there to worship. Instead, the blogger wandered through the gilded rooms of the church, his eyes and fingers glued to his smartphone. He was playing “Pokémon Go,” the app that allows users to “catch 'em all” using augmented reality.

“But, you know, I didn't catch the rarest Pokémon that you could find there — Jesus,” Sokolovsky, an atheist, said at the end of a video he recorded that day. “They said it doesn't even exist, so I'm not really surprised.”

At the time, Pokémon Go was a craze that would die down in a matter of weeks. However, the consequences for Sokolovsky would last long after he fired up the app on his phone — and posted the video of his Pokémon Goplaying venture inside the church to YouTube.

After Russian officials discovered the footage, Sokolovsky was detained last fall and charged with inciting religious hatred. On Friday, the last day of the trial, prosecutors in Russia requested a sentence of 3½ years in prison for Sokolovsky.

Sokolovsky, now 22, protested that his potential punishment outweighed the crime.

“I may be an idiot, but I am by no means an extremist,” said Sokolovsky in a statement, according to the Russian news site Meduza. He compared his suggested prison sentence, for joking about the Orthodox Church, to those who had been imprisoned for decades under Joseph Stalin for joking about communism.

“For me, this is savagery and barbarism,” Sokolovsky's statement continued, according to Meduza. “I do not