Daughter of self-immolator Irina Slavina fined for ‘discrediting army’

A court in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod has fined Margarita Murakhtaeva 30,000 rubles [€480] for “discrediting the Russian army”, reported by Murakhtaeva herself.

Murakhtaeva is the daughter of Irina Slavina, a woman who committed self-immolation on 2 October 2020 in front of a police building in Nizhny Novgorod. Prior to that, she published a post on Facebook reading “Blame my death on the Russian Federation.” She was persecuted for “spreading fake news” and had her house searched a day before the self-immolation act.

Murakhtaeva held a solitary picket this October on the same location her mother set herself on fire. Her poster read: “My mother would say ‘Putin, screw you with your war’ but Putin killed her before that”. Margarita says she “lost her job soon afterwards, faced heavy criticism, and also lost hope for the future in Russia, but did not regret what she said a single time”.