Stand-up comedian Artemy Ostanin. Photo: Ostorozhno Novosti, Telegram

The authorities in Belarus have detained a Russian stand-up comedian as he attempted to leave for a third country via Minsk, the Russian Investigative Committee announced on Tuesday.

A criminal case was opened against Artemy Ostanin on Sunday in Russia for “inciting hatred or enmity” after he allegedly made “hostile remarks about those who had suffered injury and were no longer able to work” during a stand-up performance in Moscow last month.

Artemy Ostanin with a meat grinder around his neck. Photo: Belorussky silovik

Telegram channel Belorussky Silovik said that the arresting officers had mockingly presented Ostanin with a meat grinder, a reference to another joke he tells about gifts from the Russian authorities to the mothers of Russian soldiers killed in the war, before sending him back to Moscow. The post includes a photo of a meat grinder around Ostanin’s neck.

Ostanin, a relatively obscure stand-up comic, became the subject of a viral backlash after telling a joke about a disabled veteran who had “blown himself up on a mine”, which was denounced by both the ultranationalist movement Zov Naroda and pro-war forum Abzats.

Despite those reporting the incident claiming that Ostanin had been referring to a veteran of the war in Ukraine, the comedian himself told news channel Ostorozhno Novosti that he had never even mentioned the so-called “special military operation” and that the joke was about “a beggar on the Metro who has been drifting around without legs for 20 years”.

Sergey Zaytsev of Zov Naroda told news outlet Podyom that the reference to a mine would have made the audience “associate it with veterans of the conflicts in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Chechnya”, an opinion that was shared by the country’s Investigative Committee.