FSB expert says YouTuber's ‘do everything you can’ remarks are tantamount to inciting armed rebellion

The newspaper Novaya Gazeta has published a copy of the linguistic expertise carried out in the extremism case against Higher School of Economics student and popular YouTuber Egor Zhukov.

Alexander Korshikov, the FSB Forensics Institute expert who conducted the linguistic review, argues that Zhukov incites his audience in one YouTube video to fight against Russia’s state authorities. As evidence, Korshikov cites phrases like: “We have to be vicious and systematic in the fight against the system… We’ve got to grab hold of any kind of protest…,” and “Do everything you can.”

According to the FSB forensics expert, these statements “contain incitements to fight against the authorities in Russia with an arbitrary choice of the form of protest, which includes violence, in particular, a violent seizure of power and armed rebellion.”

Novaya Gazeta consulted seven linguistic scholars, all of whom accused Korshikov of taking Zhukov’s remarks out of context and assigning his speech “invented, almost contradictory meaning.”