Prison for the German flag

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

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

Those arrested are associated with the Kaliningrad opposition group Committee for Public Self-Defense . If previously there were versions that the detainees were not involved in replacing the flags, now Shcherbakov says that the investigation has sufficient evidence: they were monitored by FSB operatives even before the action. The replacement of the flags above the FSB building also took place under the hidden supervision of intelligence officers.

However, Shcherbakov doubts that this act should be qualified under 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: the resolution on the searches conducted by the FSB after the action included Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation of an extremist organization), although this article is not officially in the case yet. During the searches, computers, phones, and cameras were confiscated.

The situation caused a resonance not only in the 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 “ south-eastern republics” is the calling card of the separatists in Ukraine.