I was going to the polls and got into an accident. Criminal case against an independent candidate in Lipetsk

Pre-trial detention center or elections

“I started publishing [information] on social networks because correspondence with officials stopped working. You create resonance, the problem is solved. But [the local government’s] ratings are deteriorating, they don’t like it,” Dmitry Krasichkov tells OVD-Info about his YouTube channel .

The activist records videos in which residents of the Lipetsk region talk about their problems: illegal landfills, environmentally hazardous industries, lack of water in villages, poor road repairs. According to Krasichkov, since 2019 he began to receive threats.

In 2020, the blogger ran for the Lipetsk City Council and was supported by Smart Voting. He won the elections, but the results were annulled . The Lipetsk election commission cited “numerous violations.” The blogger and his supporters claim that some people forced residents to write statements that Krasichkov tried to bribe them. In September 2021, Lipetsk will hold by-elections to the city council, Krasichkov decided to run again.

In the spring, a public figure got into an accident and called the appraiser, whom he had already contacted when he had an accident in 2016: “They tapped my phone, the appraiser was detained. He told [the police] that I had an accident in 2016. On June 3, [Lipetsk] “eshniki” came to Moscow and captured the man who hit me with a car [five years ago]. At the entrance to Moscow, they put me in a car and drove to Lipetsk. There they put pressure on him for 24 hours to say that the accident was faked. He refused: they kicked him out of the department, forcing him to sign that he swore.”

On June 4, in Lipetsk, Krasichkov was searched: “In the morning I open my eyes, there are show masks near my bed. Riot police, or whoever it is? There was also an investigator, counter-extremism officers and the head of this department.”

According to him, during the search they took away a car, a computer, various documents and asphalt cuttings. Krasichkov was working on the problem of road surfaces in his city and, according to him, received samples of asphalt surfaces for examination from sympathetic government officials.

“They took me to the extremism department. For three hours they demanded that I agree that the accident in 2016 was falsified. They said that they would send me to a pre-trial detention center, and if I confessed, they would simply not allow me to participate in the elections. I refused to sign. They asked who from the [city] administration gives me asphalt cuttings, who tells me which government contracts they steal from. Then they took me to the investigator. I took Article 51 because I saw that the case was being falsified,” says Krasichkov.

After interrogation, Krasichkov remained in the status of a suspect in a criminal case. Once free, the blogger published an audio recording of the conversation. He claims that the head of the Lipetsk Center “E” is threatening him. “You promised me that you would withdraw your candidacy from the elections. Now you say one thing, then another,” says the voice on the recording.

Make it before six

In July, Krasichkov was going to submit the signatures required for self-nomination to the Lipetsk City Council. In total, 56 pieces were needed, the public figure says that he collected much more.

“Two days [before submitting the signatures] my wife called and said that the bailiffs and “eschniks” were rushing in. They want to talk to me: supposedly I have failed to pay child support. It was Friday, Monday was the last day for submitting signatures. I realized that they wanted to arrest me so that I would not be able to hand over the signatures. He didn’t make contact with the bailiffs and turned off his phone [after a while they left],” says the public figure.

When Krasichkov went to the election commission on Monday morning, he was detained at the entrance, his passport was taken away and he was taken to the police department, where the bailiffs arrived. They stated that enforcement proceedings were initiated against the social activist in January for non-payment of alimony. Krasichkov said that he paid alimony and could prove it with receipts, for which he needed to go to the bank, to which he was told: “No, you’re not going anywhere.”