A court in St. Petersburg overturned a fine for a person detained at a protest against amendments to the Constitution

The city court of St. Petersburg on appeal canceled the fine to the supporter of the "indefinite protest" Yevgeny Musin, who was detained at a rally against the change in the Constitution on March 12. Musin told OVD-Info about this.

The court dismissed Musin's case, but did not consider the complaint in the case of Olga Smirnova, who was detained at the same action, and returned the materials of the Smirnova case to the court of first instance.

Earlier, the Oktyabrsky District Court found both activists guilty under the article on holding an uncoordinated public event (part 2 of article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) and fined Musin 20,000 rubles and Smirnova 10,000 rubles.

Musin, Smirnova and two other people were detained for protests against amendments to the Constitution near the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg on March 12, 2020. They were charged with holding an uncoordinated public event (part 2 of article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) and detained pending trial.

The news has been corrected, the heading has been changed on September 22 after clarifying information about Olga Smirnova's appeal with human rights activist Dinar Idrisov.

• On March 11, the State Duma approved the draft law on amendments to the Constitution, initiated by Vladimir Putin. The amendments were approved at the all-Russian vote, the main stage of which took place on July 1, 2020. According to the CEC, almost 78% of Russians supported the amendments to the Constitution. Sergey Shpilkin, a researcher of Russian election statistics, spoke to the independent media Proekt about possible fraud.