A resident of Kazan was convicted of anti-war inscriptions

Vladislav Vakhitov was sentenced to nine months of restriction of liberty under Part 2 of Art. 214 of the Criminal Code.

On March 1, 2023, the Justice of the Peace of Court District No. 11 for the Sovetsky Judicial District of Kazan sentenced Vladislav Vakhitov under Part 2 of Art. 214 of the Criminal Code (vandalism motivated by hatred). He was sentenced to nine months in prison.

A criminal case was opened in September 2022 in connection with the fact that 12 anti-war inscriptions, applied with spray paint, were found on the streets of Kazan. Vakhitov pleaded guilty to the crime and compensated for the cost of repainting. The victims (representatives of management companies) agreed to the termination of the criminal case with the imposition of a court fine. However, the public prosecutor insisted that the use of the name of the incumbent president and the anti-war nature of the inscriptions during the special operation indicate the existence of an extreme threat to public safety and morality.

Apparently, Vakhitov's actions were qualified as motivated by political hatred. We doubt the validity of prosecutions for politically motivated vandalism. In our opinion, in most of these cases, in fact, we are talking about one of the forms of political agitation. The manifestation of political hatred in itself is not criminalized, and we believe that it is appropriate to attribute this motive to aggravating circumstances only in articles on crimes that pose a serious public danger, namely, in articles related to the use of violence. In addition, from our point of view, when damage to property is not too serious, cases under Art. 214 of the Criminal Code should be terminated for insignificance. For those cases when it is impossible to do this, but the damage is still relatively small, it would be possible to introduce an article similar to Art. 7.17 of the Code of Administrative Offenses on the destruction or damage of other people's property, or clarify this article itself by including vandalism that did not cause major damage. Termination of the case with the appointment of a judicial fine also seems to be a reasonable compromise.

Sources

• The court appointed a citizen of Kazan 9 months of freedom restriction for anti-war graffiti on the walls of houses // Network Freedoms. Telegram. 2023. March 1.
• Criminal case card No. 01-0014/11/2023 // Portal of justices of the peace of the Republic of Tatarstan. February 27, 2023