Priest fined for post about DPR

On May 24, a court in Mezhdurechensk found a priest of the Association of Christian Eucharistic Communities, openly gay and anti-militarist Alexander Khmelev guilty of an administrative offense under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (propaganda or public display of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols). Khmelev told about this on his Facebook. He will have to pay a fine - one thousand rubles.

“(In court - OVD-Info ) they looked at the disk with screenshots. The semantic load of the posts is not taken into account at all ... 2 photos were taken from somewhere, I never posted them. The swastika is actually present, but those were posts about those who from Russia were going to fight in the Donbass, who were caught in Lugansk and Donetsk with tattoos of Nazi symbols, that is, about the dangers of such and its carriers, ”the priest writes. Investigators never returned Khmelev's laptop, which was confiscated for testing for extremism, notes . Mediazona

The priest was summoned to the police department on May 19. The police told him that they found a symbol similar to a swastika on his pages on social networks, and they also showed him an expert opinion, which spoke of some extremist materials. Khmelev had to spend the night in the department, then he was released pending trial.