Chronicle of current events

June 29–July 3

June 29, Monday
Memorial recognized Alexander Kostenko as a political prisoner. Human rights activists believe that the criminal case against a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine from Simferopol is an element of the political and information war between Russia and Ukraine. Kostenko was found guilty of using violence against an employee of the Crimean "Berkut" and illegal possession of weapons on May 15 this year. The judge of the Kievsky District Court of Simferopol, Viktor Mozhelyansky, sentenced him to 4 years and 2 months in a penal colony.
July 1, Wednesday
Lyudmila Bogatenkova was acquitted by the Budyonnovsky city court on one of the episodes of fraud, and on the other, it reclassified the charge and granted amnesty to her. Bogatenkova, who heads the human rights organization Mothers of Prikumye, was one of the first to report on the possible involvement of Russian soldiers in the military conflict in Ukraine.
July 2, Thursday
Alexei Gaskarov and Andrei Barabanov filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court. According to them, they were convicted for the same crime twice. The defendants in the “Bolotnaya case” dispute the provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which allow the qualification of the same crime under several articles. Barabanov and Gaskarov in February and August 2014, respectively, were found guilty by the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow of participating in mass riots and violence against a government official. Barabanov was sentenced to 3 years and 7 months in prison, Gaskarov - to 3 years and 6 months.
July 3, Friday
The State Duma passed the law on the “right to be forgotten” in the third reading. As stated in the document, citizens will be able to demand that information about themselves be removed from search engines if they consider it unreliable, irrelevant or distributed in violation of the law. If the search engine refuses to do this, then the applicant will be able to go to court. 379 deputies voted for the adoption of the law, only two voted against. Such measures will not apply to information about committed crimes, events containing signs of criminal acts and information about the commission of crimes for which a conviction has not been withdrawn or extinguished.