Not a house and not a street

On January 28, the Perovsky Court of Moscow partially satisfied the claim of Great Patriotic War veteran Viktor Semenov against the author of the Daily Journal, Alexander Podrabinek, in connection with the latter’s article “As an anti-adviser to anti-advisers...”. The article was devoted to the removal of a sign from a kebab shop “Anti-Soviet” following a complaint from the chairman of the Moscow Council of Veterans, Vladimir Dolgikh. Filipika Podrabinek's address to those veterans who signed the Dolgikhs' complaint caused a big scandal. Threats were made against the author, and he even had to limit contacts for a while. And the heroic movement “Nashi,” which acts as the main defender of veterans (and claims that Podrabinek insulted them all en masse with his article), staged a multi-day stand at the entrance where Podrabinek’s family lives, demanding that he apologize. They also acted in the Semenov v. Podrabinek trial as a third party supporting the plaintiff. Semenov asked to pay him 500 thousand rubles and to refute a number of provisions of the article. The court decided that one thousand rubles would be enough for the plaintiff, and from the provisions in the article it chose for refutation the most dubious from the point of view of refutation. According to the decision of the Perovsky court, Podrabinek will have to refute the following text: “Your homeland is not Russia. Your homeland is the Soviet Union. You are Soviet veterans, and your country, thank God, has been gone for 18 years.”

The Nashi movement is satisfied with the court's decision. Self-proclaimed defenders of the veteran apparently do not think that it is humiliating for the veteran. In their opinion, Podrabinek “will be forced not only to apologize, but also to publish a refutation of this shameful article.” They don’t seem to care about the details, the main thing for them is not to be recognized as complete losers, as has already happened with their lawsuit against Ren-TV in connection with the story about the same article by Podrabinek that allegedly defamed them.