Russian Teens Face Up to 5 Years for Making a Snow Penis

Two Russian teenagers are facing lengthy prison time for making a giant snow penis in front of a war memorial over the weekend—a harmless prank that investigators are now equating with “rehabilitating Nazism.”

The 14-year-old and 16-year-old boys, who have not been named, created the sculpture in front of the Memorial of Glory in the Altai village of Staroaleiskoye before photographing it and then destroying the large snow phallus.

But even that short-lived stunt may cost them five years in prison, according to the news outlet Baza, which cited the local branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee. Police quickly detained the teens, hit their parents with misdemeanor charges for “not fulfilling parental duties,” and handed the case over to federal investigators.

State-run media, meanwhile, reassured the public that the feds had the “incident with the snow phallus” under control. Alexander Bastrykin, Vladimir Putin’s top investigator, personally got involved in the case earlier this week, ordering investigators to brief him on the results of the probe into the war memorial’s “desecration,” according to a press release from the Investigative Committee.

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