Crimea herder, 44, given suspended year for a wild cannabis bush
The Chornomorske district court in Crimea gave a 44-year-old local man one year of imprisonment, suspended, with a one-year probation period for picking branches from a wild cannabis bush he found while grazing cattle near Vnukovo and drying them for his own use. Prosecutors qualified the act under part 1 of article 228 of the Russian Criminal Code, and no weight was published.
🇷🇺 Vnukovo, Chornomorske district, Crimea · Russia
The Chornomorske district court in Crimea, known in Russian as the Chernomorsky
district court, convicted a 44-year-old local resident of unlawfully acquiring
and storing parts of plants containing a narcotic drug in a significant
quantity.[1]The charge was part 1 of article 228 of the Russian Criminal
Code, which covers unlawful acquisition and storage of plant parts containing
narcotic drugs without intent to sell.[2]The court gave him one year of
imprisonment, suspended, with a probation period of the same length.[3]
In mid-August 2026 the man was grazing cattle in a field near the village of
Vnukovo when he found a wild-growing cannabis bush.[1]He pulled several
branches with leaves from the bush and carried them to a farm outbuilding to dry
them for his own later use.[1]The court found the drug was stored for
personal use, without intent to sell.[2]
The verdict was published in the name of the prosecutor’s office of Crimea,
which announced the case through its press service.[3]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Charged
1
Convicted
1
Sentenced
1
Prison
1 year suspended with 1-year probation
Agency
Прокуратура Республики Крым
Agency type
Court, Prosecutor
Cannabis
Herbal cannabis
Activity
Possession
Setting
Field, Farm
Grown
Wild
Charge
unlawful acquisition and storage of parts of plants containing narcotic drugs in significant quantity (part 1 of article 228)
The exact sentencing date was not published; 6 November 2026 is the publication date of all three accounts and is used as the incident date.
No weight of the dried plant material, no area and no street value were published, so no cannabis quantity is recorded.
The accounts say only that the bush was found in a field near Vnukovo and do not say where the dried material was found or whether the outbuilding was searched.
Whether the verdict had entered into force, and any appeal, were not reported.
Only one bush is described; the number of branches picked was not counted.
All three accounts restate the prosecutor's office of Crimea statement, and the MK in Krymu photograph is a prosecutor's office handout.
The submitted Objektiv page illustrates the item with a generic courts, scales and gavel stock image, which is not a photo of this event and is left out.
A Blagoveshchensk city court sentenced a local man to four and a half years in a strict-regime penal colony for illegally acquiring and storing more than 23 kilograms of marijuana and cultivating 162 cannabis plants. He gathered the plant near Markovo in August 2025, hid it in an abandoned house in Belogorye, and tended sprouts in his own garden from May to July 2026.
The Bakhchisaray district court in Crimea convicted a resident of the village of Rechnoye under part 2 of article 228 and gave him three years of imprisonment, suspended, with a three-year probation period. Prosecutors said he picked leaves and flower heads from cannabis bushes he had planted at his home in July 2026 and kept 312 grams of the plant material in his outbuilding for his own use.
Convicted 1Sentenced 1Cannabis 312 gPrison 3 years suspended with 3-year probation
A court in Amur Oblast convicted a 20-year-old resident of Petropavlovka, in Ivanovsky District, of illegally buying a large consignment of cannabis in June and revoked his earlier suspended sentence. He was ordered to serve two and a half years in a general-regime penal colony after pleading guilty in full.
A court in Usman municipal okrug, Lipetsk Oblast, sentenced a local man to nine months in a strict-regime colony for illegally growing more than 30 cannabis bushes on the garden plot of his house. Prosecutors said he sowed the seeds for his own use, and the case was brought under part 1 of article 231 of Russia's Criminal Code.
