Prosecution for discrediting the use of Russian military forces and calls for sanctions

The SOVA Center will include in its monitoring cases of persecution under Art. 20.3.3 and 20.3.4 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and relevant criminal articles.

On March 4, 2022, laws on amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) and the Criminal Code (CC) were signed regarding calls for sanctions, the spread of fakes about the Russian armed forces, their discrediting and calls to obstruct the use of the armed forces.

In particular, liability was introduced under Art. 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and Art. 280.3 of the Criminal Code (in case of a repeated violation of the law within a year after bringing to administrative responsibility) for "public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, maintain international peace and security, including public calls to prevent the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for these purposes", as well as liability under Art. 20.3.4 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and Art. 284.2 of the Criminal Code (in case of repeated prosecution within a year) for calls for the introduction or extension of political or economic sanctions against the Russian Federation, citizens of the Russian Federation or Russian legal entities.

We consider it unlawful to prosecute for critical statements regarding the political course of the state, including in regarding the events in Ukraine, if such statements do not contain calls for use of violence or other clearly unlawful acts in the generally accepted understanding. At the same time, we understand that in acute situations people often admit statements that could formally be considered illegal, but, in fact, are not inflammatory propaganda, but an emotional remark. We often have there is no way to get acquainted with the content of statements, and even more so with their context, especially now, with such an intense flow of news. Therefore, in in many cases we will refrain from evaluating the statement. known to us cases of persecution under Art. 20.3.3 (public actions aimed at to discredit the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, to maintain international peace and security) we will collect here and separately we will track cases of persecution under Art. 20.3.4 (calls to the introduction of restrictive measures against the Russian Federation, citizens of the Russian Federation or Russian legal entities) of the Code of Administrative Offenses, when they appear. We will cover cases of prosecution under criminal articles in separate news.