Two intersecting ellipses: the presenter of Channel One was fined under an extremist article

One of the lawyers of those people against whom our organization is working wrote [a statement] against me. We are unraveling a big skein: we have four companies on our radar that, in our opinion, have signs of fraudulent schemes. We found many victims and prepared documents to submit to law enforcement agencies.

Apparently, our opponents caught us by noticing that this “Svarog square” was on our website. As soon as the prosecutor’s office contacted me, I didn’t delay, I didn’t try, excuse the verb, to jump off. I decided to look into this position: I went to the prosecutor's office.

I didn’t like the behavior of the prosecutor’s office; they didn’t even look into it too much. On the other hand, they applied an examination that does not stand up to criticism. The prosecutor's office, without checking anything, used as a basis for the accusation the conclusion of a person who is, forgive me, a linguist. The signs are heraldry, but for some reason the linguist concludes that this particular sign is the “Svarog square”. And it supposedly contains two intersecting ellipses. Moreover, a link to the video on YouTube was provided. This link did not open! As far as I understand, [the prosecutor’s office] didn’t even check the link.

I suggested that the prosecutor limit himself to a warning: especially since we removed [the “Svarog square”] from the site and stopped using it. Moreover, there are changes in the Administrative Code that if there is no propaganda of extremism, displaying the sign is legal. My opinion is that the Ostankino interdistrict prosecutor’s office wanted to give the applicants a reason to say that we are extremists.

I personally attended the trial: this situation worries me deeply. The amount of the fine is not important to me; the legal position itself is important to me.

In court there was an accusatory bias right away. The court decision contains the same link that the prosecutor's office referred to and which does not open! [On YouTube] it just says “video unavailable.” Not deleted, not blocked. I don’t know what’s there - what if it wasn’t the sign of Svarog, but, for example, pornography? Nobody figured it out. How absurd is this!

At the trial, I showed photographs of monuments on which the “Svarog square” is used: at the Demetrius Cathedral [in Vladimir], at the monument to Ilya Muromets in Murom, excuse me, at the main monument of Russian writing and literature, I mean the monument to Cyril and Methodius in China -city [in Moscow]. Every year the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' holds a religious procession and prayer service there. There are photographs with [patriarchs] Kirill, Alexy [the second]. It turns out that all the media that cover [these religious processions] should be fined?

At the trial we filed three motions, which were rejected one after another. I said that I was ready to pay for the examination so that the court would have an objective basis for making a decision.

We have prepared an appeal and will submit it on Monday. Those villains who took advantage of the situation began to shout that I was an extremist, that “The Force of Law” was extremist. But there is not a single word in the court decision that we are recognized as extremists.

We, of course, slipped at this point, but we did not know that this sign was extremist. In our country there is no single list of signs recognized as extremist. Sorry, I don’t keep in mind all the signs and organizations that could be extremist. This was the first time I heard about the “Northern Brotherhood” - banned by the Moscow City Court in 2012 - which used this Slavic amulet symbol.

We will appeal to all authorities: how can an extremist sign be used on monuments and shown on all channels? We wrote to the President, the Ministry of Culture, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, the Moscow City Hall, and the Russian Orthodox Church. We were recommended to contact the [department of] cultural heritage of the [mayor's office] of Moscow: people there are also surprised. The department wrote to the sons of [Vyacheslav] Klykov, the sculptor who created the monument to [Cyril and Methodius]. We have prepared a letter to the State Duma.

We need results, we need to change legislative practice. We want to ensure that our Old Slavonic amulet is taken out from under this word - “extremism”.