In Irkutsk, a blogger was fined 20 thousand rubles for organizing a public event

On August 4, the Kirovsky District Court of Irkutsk fined local blogger Natalya Podprugina 20 thousand rubles under the article on organizing an action without filing a notification (Part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code). Podprugina spoke about this on her YouTube channel.

The court decided that Podprugina organized a rally and demonstration of solidarity with residents of the Khabarovsk Territory on July 25 on Speransky Square in Irkutsk. The reason for this was the videos on the YouTube channel, where she allegedly called for participation in the action.

Witnesses interviewed by police stated that Podprugina was at the rally with a poster in her hands. The blogger herself claims that she attended the action without a poster. The witnesses who were interviewed by the police, according to Podprugina, were intoxicated.

“When asked by police officers who, in his opinion, was the organizer of public events, based on the photographs provided,” one of the witnesses pointed to Podprugina, she said in her video.

“After the public [events] were held, I was actively interested in their coverage on the Internet, and therefore used the page on the social network [YouTube] “Natasha’s ZA-marks,” the blogger quotes a fragment from the case materials.

She also noted that in the case file, the police claim that the channel on which the call for the action was posted belongs to Podprugina. However, the police did not provide any evidence of this.

According to law enforcement officers, during the action the protesters used posters “I’ve had enough”, “Freedom for Furgal”, “Khabarovsk, we are with you”, “No to deforestation”, and also chanted “We are the power here”, “We are against the amendments”, “We stand for Furgal from the Amur to the Urals” and shouted other “socio-political slogans.”

On July 30, a court in Irkutsk already fined one of the participants in the July 25 action. Vladimir Smolin was found guilty of violating the rules of participation in an action that resulted in interference with road users (Part 6.1 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code). He was given a fine of 10 thousand rubles.

• Since July 11, residents of the Khabarovsk Territory have been holding actions in support of ex-governor Sergei Furgal, demanding a public trial in Khabarovsk. On Saturday, July 25, the procession in Khabarovsk gathered, according to various estimates, from 20 to 90 thousand participants. Actions of solidarity with the Khabarovsk Territory also took place in Irkutsk, but there were no arrests.
• The then-current governor of the Khabarovsk Territory, Sergei Furgal, was detained on July 9 by FSB officers on suspicion of involvement in a number of contract killings. He was taken to Moscow, where, by decision of the Basmanny District Court of Moscow, he was placed in custody until September 9. On July 20, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Furgal’s resignation from the post of governor and appointed Furgal’s fellow party member in the LDPR, Mikhail Degtyarev, to this post as interim, Mediazona reported .