Police say protesters may have committed hate speech by quoting the former Chechen leader who just got his own bridge

Earlier this week, St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko made the controversial decision to rename one of the city's bridges after the first president of the Chechen Republic, Akhmat Kadyrov, who fought prominently against Russian federal troops in the First Chechen War in the 1990s. In 1999, at the start of the Second Chechen War, Kadyrov abandoned the insurgency and sided with Moscow, later being rewarded with the Chechen presidency.

Today, critics of Poltavchenko's decision hung a banner from the bridge that will now bear Kadyrov's name. The sign displayed one of Kadyrov's most infamous remarks from the First Chechen War, when he called on his troops to “kill as many Russians as you can.” (For years, it was thought that Kadyrov had called on his soldiers to kill 150 Russians for every Chechen killed by Moscow, but he later clarified in an interview that he'd ordered his men to kill “as many Russians as you can.”)

Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal case involving the incident, saying the banner might qualify as illegal hate speech, police told the news agency Flashnord.

On June 6, between 350 and 1,000 people protested against the proposal to rename the bridge after a man who once declared jihad against Russia. Governor Poltavchenko dismissed objections to the idea, saying St. Petersburg has a tradition of honoring “Russia's heroes.”