Putin allowed the use of Nazi symbols on the condition that Nazism was condemned

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing the use of Nazi symbols and paraphernalia in works of science, literature and art without promoting Nazism. The document was published on the official Internet portal of legal information.

The initiative to allow the use of prohibited symbols “provided that Nazism and extremism are condemned” was made by a group of deputies headed by the chairman of the committee on culture, Elena Yampolskaya. According to the explanatory note, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the courts “recently ... have experienced difficulties” with the application of the law due to its wording: for example, over the past 10 years, the number of fines under the article has increased 30 times: from 54 to 1639 in 2018 .

However, the initiative met with criticism: in the government's recall, doubts were expressed that the "denunciation of Nazism" could be clearly expressed in works of art and that the context for the publication of the swastika could only be formally negative. The SOVA monitoring center noted that the amendments will not stop the persecution of ordinary Internet users: they will have to prove that the frame is a work of art.