In St. Petersburg, the fine for a participant in a rally laying flowers in memory of the Constitution was canceled

The City Court of St. Petersburg canceled a fine of 10,000 rubles to Anastasia Burakova, chairperson of Open Russia, for laying flowers near the building of the Constitutional Court. This was reported to OVD-Info by Alexander Peredruk, a lawyer from the Apology of Protest.

Thus, the court overturned the decision of the Oktyabrsky District Court, which found Burakova guilty under the article on participation in an unapproved picketing action (part 5 of article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). Her case was sent back for retrial.

“The motivational part of the decision is not ready yet. We insisted that although Burukova’s actions were, in a certain sense, freedom of expression and represented a kind of performance, they did not fall under the definition provided for by the federal law on rallies, meetings and demonstrations, and they were clearly not a solitary picketing. Burakova's actions consisted in the fact that she laid flowers with a black ribbon and the Constitution at the building of the Constitutional Court, which clearly does not apply to picketing, ”said Alexander Peredruk, who represented Burakova in court, to OVD-Info.

On August 18, the City Court of St. Petersburg canceled several more decisions on detainees at other actions. Thus, Judge Irina Kalinina canceled 30 hours of compulsory work assigned to Svetlana Sitnikova for an action against amendments to the Constitution. In addition, the court canceled the fines for five detainees near the court, where on June 22 sentences were announced for the defendants in the Network case. In addition, the City Court declared illegal the administrative arrest of Agit Rossii activists Pavel Ivankina for a single picket for the preservation of the constitutional order.

• On March 15, 2020, Burakova and two other people were detained near the building of the Constitutional Court in St. Petersburg during a rally against changes to the Constitution for laying flowers, and more than twenty people for holding solo pickets. We published a list of detainees.