The court dismissed the administrative case against the head of International Memorial for blogging on Ekho Moskvy.

The Tverskoy District Court terminated administrative proceedings against Yan Rachinsky, Chairman of the Board of International Memorial, for the absence of a “foreign agent” label in the blog on the Ekho Moskvy website. This was reported to OVD-Info by Memorial's press secretary, Yulia Orlova.

Vitaly Ruvinsky, editor-in-chief of the Ekho website, came to the court session and confirmed that the website's editors had independently created and maintained the organization's blog and published Memorial's materials from free access. Thus, Rachinsky, as chairman of the board of the International Memorial, cannot be recognized as the subject of an offense under this article.

At the previous meeting, the judge was unable to make a decision on the basis of an official letter from the radio station. According to Roskomnadzor, Memorial should still keep track of who publishes their texts and where.

A protocol under the article on the publication by a foreign agent of materials without appropriate marking (part 2 of article 19.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) was drawn up at the "International Memorial" and its leader in early December.

• Memorial has launched a collection of donations to pay fines under the article on “foreign agents”.
• At the moment, 25 courts of first instance out of 28 have passed, the total amount of the fine on the Human Rights Center "Memorial" and "International Memorial" and their leaders has reached 4.7 million rubles.
• The International Society "Memorial" was recognized as a "foreign agent" in 2016.