'Boomer' Scriptwriter Ivan Vyrypaev Sentenced To 8 Years In Colony In Moscow For 'Fakes' About Russian Armed Forces

• IVAN VYRYPAEV
• 15.12.2023, 11:48

He publicly condemned the war.

The Basmanny Court of Moscow has sentenced in absentia playwright and director Ivan Vyrypaev, known for his films "Boomer. Film Two", "Diary of a Murderer", UFO, to eight years in a general regime colony, having found him guilty of spreading "fakes" about the Russian army, the Russian media reported.

The prosecution had asked for a 10-year prison sentence for Vyrypayev. The defence insisted that the information, which the investigation considered a "fake", was taken by Vyrypayev from open sources and asked to return the case to the prosecutor's office.

The reason for the case, which became known in May 2023, was Vyrypayev's interview to Chicago's Radio NVC, the YouTube channels of Khodorkovsky Live and OVD-Info, as well as several publications on the director's personal website.

Before the outbreak of war, Ivan Vyrypayev's plays were performed at more than 40 Russian theatres, including the Moscow Art Theatre named after Chekhov, the BDT, the Theatre of Nations and Sovremennik. After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vyrypayev, who has been living in Warsaw for the past few years, publicly condemned the war.

At the end of 2021, there was a premiere of the play "1.8 metres" - that is how much space is allotted to a person in the overcrowded Belarusian prisons. In the play, actors from Belarus, Poland and Russia read letters and memoirs of political prisoners and their relatives. Aleh Harbuz remembers Vitold Ashurak in the performance.