In St. Petersburg, activists were attacked because of the Ukrainian flag

In St. Petersburg on August 19, an unknown attacked activists of the Solidarity of St. Petersburg and Democratic Petersburg Elena Grigoryev, Vladimir Shipitsyn, Olga Smirnov and Vsevolod Neelaev. The human rights activist Dinar Idrisov spoke about this on Facebook.

According to him, activists were shaeped after a memorable action near the Mariinsky Palace. They held in their hands packages with cleaned protest posters, as well as expanded Russian and Ukrainian flags. The stranger was outraged by the Ukrainian flag in the hands of one of the activists, so the man himself called the police. Law enforcement officers arrived and checked Shipitsyn's documents, after which they left.

After the police departure, the unknown attacked Grigoryev, holding the Ukrainian flag in his hands. Idrisov notes that the man “pounced with his fists, hit her in the stomach, and when she ran out to her friends, caught up with her and fell to the ground, tried to continue to beat.” Other activists rushed to Grigoryeva to the rescue, one of them used a pepper can, after which the attacker retreated.

Activists left, but the stranger found them again. According to Idrisov, he "attacked Vladimir Shipitsyn with his fists, hit his eye with a boot, and then he began to methodically beat him with fists." Nelavev tried to separate the fight at the moment when someone shot from traumatic weapons. After some time, law enforcement officers arrived and stated that the activists beat a policeman who allegedly attacked. The stranger himself pointed to Nelaev as a shooter. Law enforcement officers detained Nelaev, delivered to the police department No. 16, where they left the activist for the night without paperwork.

On August 20, according to Idrisov, the issue of initiating a criminal case under an article on hooliganism (Article 213 of the Criminal Code) was resolved, but there were not enough grounds for this. As a result, Nelaev was accused of petty hooliganism (Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) and fined 500 rubles. According to police officers, the activist expressed disrespect for society using obsceneity.

Idrisov noted that he was never allowed to the police department as a defender. He also said that employees of the Center for Combating Extremism came to the police department.

Fixed on October 4: it was written in the heading that activists were attacked with an injury.