News digest for June 30

The verdict of the defendant in the “palace case”, the real sentences for Jehovah’s Witnesses and the recognition of European foundations as “undesirable organizations” - we talk about the main news for June 30.

• A court in Krasnoyarsk sentenced Vitaly Berdnikov, a defendant in the “palace case,” to one and a half years of probation. He was found guilty of using violence against a government official at a rally in support of Alexei Navalny. According to investigators, Berdnikov threw a plastic bottle and snowballs at security forces during the rally.
• In the Amur region, Jehovah's Witnesses were given real sentences under the article on organizing the activities of an extremist organization. 43-year-old believer Alexei Berchuk was sentenced to a record term for followers of this religion - eight years in prison, and his co-religionist Igor Golik - to seven years.
• In Nazran, a criminal case was opened against a local resident under an article on public calls for extremism on the Internet. According to law enforcement officers, the man called for “the destruction of representatives of one of the political parties.”
• The defendant in the “Moscow case,” Kirill Zhukov, was denied parole. In September 2019, after a summer of protests over the exclusion of independent candidates from elections to the Moscow City Duma, Zhukov was sentenced to three years in prison under the article on the use of violence against a government official. Later the term was reduced to two and a half years, the general regime colony was replaced by a settlement colony.
• The Samara court upheld the sentence of the defendant in the “palace case” Konstantin Muratov. In April, he was given a two-year suspended sentence - according to the prosecution, Muratov used violence that was not dangerous to life and health against a police officer during a rally.
• Former Navalny LIVE employee Alexei Yakovlev was detained at Sheremetyevo after his flight landed in Moscow. The activist was taken for questioning as a witness in a criminal case of fraud brought against Alexei Navalny.
• The Moscow City Court extended the arrest of journalist Ivan Safronov until October 7. He has been in pre-trial detention for almost a year due to charges of treason: Safronov allegedly transferred information abroad about Russia’s military-technical cooperation with African countries and information about the activities of the armed forces in the Middle East region.
• The Prosecutor General's Office recognized four European foundations— Future of Russia Foundation , Khodorkovsky Foundation , Oxford Russia Fund and European Choice —as “undesirable organizations.” The agency is confident that their activities “represent a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation.”
• In Moscow, a municipal deputy was fined because of a video from a rally in support of Navalny on January 23. The court found the politician guilty of organizing an unapproved public event, since on the day of the rally he posted a video on social networks.
• Yevgeny Kovalenko, a defendant in the “Moscow case,” was released from prison. In September 2019, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison under the article on the use of violence against a police officer, but in June 2021 the court replaced the unserved part of the sentence with correctional labor.