Kolomna: local activist Valentin Sokolov is charged with inciting national hatred

In January 2018, it became known that a criminal case had been opened in Kolomna, Moscow Region, under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code against local activist Valentin Sokolov, suspected of publishing xenophobic materials on social networks.

The case was initiated against a local activist who was nominated in 2016 to the Moscow Regional Duma from the Rodina party, Valentina Sokolov, who is accused of publishing an image on the Odnoklassniki network with a text inciting hatred towards Russians, as well as a publication on the Facebook network two videos with xenophobic comments calling, among other things, to violence against blacks.

The accusation concerning the publication in Odnoklassniki, we consider unlawful, tk. according to the screenshots, Sokolov reposted the image with a pro-Ukrainian text that called for the murder of Russians, accompanying it with the comment: “ How stubborn do you have to be to carry such heresy. Or consciously kindle. It's scary to read ." However, the fact that Sokolov republished the text not for the purpose of propagating the ideas set out in it, but, on the contrary, with the aim of discrediting them, was not reflected in the case file: the investigation only drew attention to the fact that in the “Miscellaneous” folder on Sokolov’s page, a picture with The text was saved without comment (on the Odnoklassniki social network, all published images are automatically saved in this folder).

The publications on Sokolov's Facebook page do indeed have an overtly racist nature and subject to Art. 282 of the Criminal Code. Sokolov himself claims that the page where the videos and comments were found does not belong to him and is fabricated.

According to the defendant, the case against him was initiated on 15 July 2016, in July 2017 it was terminated, and then started again according to new episodes.

Initially, a number of other materials appeared in the case. xenophobic content, published not only on Facebook, but also on VKontakte, but no charges were brought against them, and the publications themselves appear in the case as confirmation of Sokolov's xenophobic views.

Sources

• Inc. inf.
• Kolomenets on trial for repost 282 // Youtube.com. 2017. December 30.