Prison for German flag

Kaliningrad activists Oleg Savvin and Mikhail Feldman, as well as their Moscow comrade Dmitry Fonarev, are accused under part 2 of Art. 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (group hooliganism) for hanging the German flag on the building of the local FSB. Judging by the decision on the initiation of the case, the investigation believes that the change of Russian flag to German symbolized "the need to join the Kaliningrad region to the EU."

The replacement of the Russian flag with German on the building of the Kaliningrad FSB occurred on March 11. For more than 20 days, the detainees spent under administrative arrest on strange occasions: for “cursing” on March 11, as well as earlier at Kaliningrad rallies, for smoking in the marijuana chamber (Dmitry Fonarev accused of this claims that the neighbors were smoked). On April 21 and 28, all three were sent to a pre -trial detention center already under a criminal article.

As the lawyer of Mikhail Feldman Eduard Shcherbakov explained to the OVD-Info, the detainees are not accused of separatism, but law enforcement officers claim that, allegedly, hanging the German flag (early in the morning, on a deserted street) was accompanied by certain Nazi gestures. According to Shcherbakov, his client Feldman, a Jew by nationality, is ready to defend his honor and dignity from such accusations in court.

The arrested are associated with the Kaliningrad opposition group Committee of Public Self -Defense . If earlier there were versions that the detainees were not involved in the replacement of flags, now Shcherbakov says that the investigation has sufficient evidence: they were followed by FSB operatives even before the promotion. The very replacement of the flags over the FSB building also took place under the hidden supervision of special services.

However, Shcherbakov doubts that this act should qualify at 213.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and notes that the investigation is trying to “politicize” the incident. Group hooliganism may not be the only article in this story: in the decision on searches conducted by the FSB after the action, she appeared 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation of an extremist organization), although officially there is no this article in the case. During the searches, computers, phones, camera were seized.

The situation caused a resonance not only in Russian, but also in the Ukrainian media, since the replacement of Ukrainian state flags on administrative buildings with the flags of the Russian Federation and the self-proclaimed “southeastern republics”-a business card of separatists in Ukraine.