Russian court leaves blogger who fought in Ukraine free, even though he is accused of raping a child

A St. Petersburg court has left free the “Orthodox blogger” Claud Rommel, accused of raping an 11-year-old girl. Since he serves in the Russian army under contract, he was sent to a military unit instead of a pre-trial detention center.

This is what “Important Stories” writes about and “Fontanka”.

Claud Rommel, 31, is accused of systematically raping his partner's underage daughter from September 2022 to February 2024. According to media reports, he moved the child into his room because of, as he claimed, “her difficult relationship with her mother.”

Upon learning of this, the girl's relative contacted the police (the mother did not contact the police). When this story became publicly known in the winter of 2024, the child was placed in an orphanage, and Rommel found himself in a combat zone. According to the Baza Telegram channel, he went to war against Ukraine after the police began checking information about his relationship with a minor.

Rommel runs a video blog in which he talks about Orthodoxy and has published a video from the front. In particular, his video went viral on social networks after he was wounded by a “bird” in August. Russians called Cloud a “Russian German” fighting for the Russian Federation.

But the media, citing the man's father, wrote that his real name was Alexander. He renounced his name when he returned from fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when he was wounded and became a believer. The husband moved to St. Petersburg and decided to start a new life under the name of a Wehrmacht field marshal.

As Fontanka writes, Cloud first “appeared” in the public space in 2021. He claimed that Saint John of Kronstadt of the Russian Orthodox Church appeared to him at a cemetery, and since then he began to blog. Shortly before his arrest, he published “farewell” messages and stated that he was “the direct son of one of the Illuminati of the main departments of the world government.” He was detained while leaving a medical facility to be sent to a military unit.

According to the publication, the investigation has “ironclad grounds for opening a case” on the rape of a minor and violent sexual assault. Rommel himself denies guilt, although he admitted that he performed a “medical massage” on the girl. In addition, Rommel may have more victims, Fontanka writes. He communicated with several girls from “difficult and fanatical families”, they also appeared in his blogs.

The court hearing on October 3 was held behind closed doors. In the end, the court refused to grant the petition to take Claud Rommel into custody. Instead, he was given a preventive measure in the form of supervision by the command of the military unit until the end of his contract.

“If there needs to be a preventive measure, let it be. But since the man is a serviceman, his contract is valid, then he must report to the unit. Roughly speaking, he came from the SVO only because there are a lot of shrapnel in his leg. Sometimes it is impossible to immediately carry out an operation there,” said Rommel’s lawyer.

Prepared by: Nina Petrovich