President Dmitry Medvedev, at a meeting with police officers on the occasion of Law Enforcement Officers Day , proposed tightening responsibility for crimes related to extremism and directed against the foundations of the state system. “I believe that in some situations here we can think about tightening responsibility, but we just need to look at specific compositions where this is necessary,” Medvedev said on Thursday at a meeting with personnel of one of the departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow, adding that he is waiting proposals from representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

This is how the president responded to the idea of introducing tougher sanctions for crimes that encroach on the foundations of the state system, which was put forward by the head of the center for countering extremism of the main department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow, Timur Valiulin .

Medvedev has already introduced initiatives affecting those convicted under the “extremist” article 282. Thus, in April of this year, he introduced a bill that would allow those convicted of extremism to be sent to other regions, and in October, a bill that would prohibit those convicted under the “extremism” article from working in schools.

Lawyer of the human rights association "Agora" Pavel Chikov believes that with this statement Medvedev is unlikely to announce future amendments to the Criminal Code. According to the expert, the president said too little to draw far-reaching conclusions from this, and the speech is more like a pre-election PR signal to the security forces, to whom Medvedev wanted to tell that the authorities love and appreciate them.

According to the human rights activist, if Medvedev actually introduces amendments to the criminal legislation to toughen punishment for crimes of an extremist nature, this will be fraught with serious political risk. The vagueness of the wording of the term “extremism” is already causing serious criticism not only from human rights activists and journalists, but also from scientists, linguists and even representatives of the Supreme Court, says Chikov.

Representatives of various public groups have recently repeatedly criticized Article 282 “Inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity,” as well as 282.1 “Organization of an extremist community” and 282.2 “Organization of the activities of an extremist organization.” They stated that the authorities are using the vague wording of the article in order to bring civil activists to criminal liability. Parliamentary parties also used tritika. In June of this year, the LDPR party proposed repealing the law on extremism.

Extremists are punished mildly