Russian teens face up to 5 years in prison for erecting giant snow penis
They could be serving hard time.
Two teenage boys in Russia are staring down a possible five-year prison sentence after they erected a giant snow penis in front of a war memorial in the country Sunday, according to a report.
The boys, ages 14 and 16, sculpted the large phallus directly in front of a memorial statue in the Altai village of Staroaleiskoye, then snapped a photo which they posted to social media before they destroyed it, the Daily Beast reported, citing local news outlets.
The Investigative Committee of Russia said the memorial is dedicated to villagers who were killed during the Eastern Front of World War II and called the prank an act of “desecration” in a Telegram post.
Though the erect genitalia didn’t last long, Russian investigators have accused the teens of “rehabilitating Nazism” given the memorial’s significance, according to the outlet.
The boys could face up to five years in prison, according to the news outlet Baza, the Beast reported.
Local police detained the teens and slapped their parents with misdemeanor charges for “not fulfilling parental duties” before handing the investigation over to federal authorities.
The case has been brought up to the highest ranks within the Investigative Committee.
The head of the committee and close advisor to President Vladimir Putin, Alexander Bastrykin, has ordered investigators to keep him updated on the results of the case, according to the Telegram post.
The boys aren’t the first to be arrested for phallic creations in Russia.
In October, a teenage couple were arrested for drawing a 100-foot-long penis with their footsteps in the snow in front of historic police monument in front of a historic police monument, according to the Mirror.
The pair, both 19, were caught on security cameras trudging through the snow to create a path resembling male genitalia, police said.
The couple was forced to confess and apologize for the stunt in a video recorded in front of the monument dedicated to 232 police killed in the line of duty since 1918. They were also expected to face criminal charges.
Snow penises have apparently been a growing issue in parts of Russia over the past few months — angering some residents so much that they started an online petition against the flood of snow schlongs in their neighborhood.
Residents of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, said that the “mob of snow dicks” in every district of the city went “beyond the bounds of reasons,” in a November Change.org petition, according to an English translation.
“Yekaterinburg is a modern and creative city, but why do people allow themselves to dishonor its name and disfigure it with pseudo-creativity?” the petition states.
The erect snow sculptures had been spotted on top of car hoods, in public squares and near university campuses, the Moscow Times reported.
One of the first and largest X-rated snow statues was crafted in a park outside the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater and the Ural State University, according to images shared by local media.
Municipal workers later toppled over the larger-than-life pecker with an excavator, according to the Times.
Local students were expected to be behind the erotic winter art, which Yekaterinburg Mayor Alexei Orlov called an “outrage.”