The Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg did not accredit the Ekho Moskvy journalist due to the “large number of applications”; the hall was half empty

The Public Relations Department of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly refused accreditation to Echo of Moscow in St. Petersburg correspondent Sergei Kagermazov due to a “large number of applications” from other journalists. about this . wrote The editor-in-chief of the radio station, Valery Nechai,

Almost all the seats in the hall for correspondents on the day of the meeting on January 13 were free: in the photo that provided to the radio station, four people were sitting there. the Fontanka correspondent

regularly Kagermazov was denied accreditation after he wrote at the end of 2016 about the purchase of watches and jewelry worth 4 million rubles for parliament. He noted that Chairman of Parliament Vyacheslav Makarov had previously given watches from his own hand to cadets of the Mozhaisky Military Space Academy, where he taught.

After this, Makarov, answering Kagermazov’s question about the publication, told his colleague: “Maybe we’ll call him, show him how watches are awarded in the army,” and a few months later the journalist was given a summons at the exit from the Legislative Assembly.

The draft commission approved the journalist’s request to replace military service with an alternative civilian one, but he, deciding that Makarov would contribute to the worsening of service conditions, decided not to go for it. The Investigative Committee began an investigation under the article on evasion from service (part 2 of Article 328 of the Criminal Code), but they refused to initiate a case . At the same time, the journalist turned 27 years old - he left the draft age and returned to work in St. Petersburg.