Translated material
Former operator of Navalny's Arkhangelsk headquarters was taken to the colony
On May 15, Ruslan Akhmetshin, a former cameraman and photographer of Navalny’s Arkhangelsk headquarters, was brought to penal colony No. 3 in the village of Talagi in the Arkhangelsk region. This is reported by SOTA.
On October 26, 2022, the Arkhangelsk Regional Court sentenced Akhmetshin to two and a half years in a penal colony. In addition, the convict was ordered to pay 180 thousand rubles for the work of expert psychologists and historians as part of the investigation into the case. On March 27, the Second Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction confirmed this verdict.
Akhmetshin was found guilty under the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism (part 2 and part 4 of article 354.1 of the Criminal Code) due to comments on VKontakte. According to investigators, he called the celebration of May 9 in Russia a “vulgar carnival,” and also wrote that the USSR and Germany were allies for two years and occupied Poland together.
The prosecutor's office asked to assign Akhmetshin three years in a penal colony, and also to prohibit him from administering websites for five years, since he “has popularity, subscribers and can influence the formation of public opinion.”
The case against the man was opened in March 2022. Initially, Akhmetshin was given a ban on certain actions as a preventive measure, but in May he was sent to a pre-trial detention center because of an attempt to travel to Yerevan for treatment. Later, the period of detention was repeatedly extended .
Akhmetshin was also one of the defendants in the suit of the Arkhangelsk police against local activists - on October 24, the court satisfied the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which asked to recover 766 thousand rubles from nine people. According to security officials, these are the expenses the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs incurred due to overtime work during protests in support of Alexei Navalny on January 23 and 31, 2021.
- After the start of the war with Ukraine, the number of cases under the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism (Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code) increased sharply - presumably, security forces use this article to put pressure on those who could potentially oppose the “special operation” in Ukraine and its “denazification.” According to the SOVA Information and Analytical Center, many cases under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code are initiated unlawfully and should be classified under other articles of the Criminal Code or resolved within the framework of civil rather than criminal proceedings.
- On June 9, 2021, the Moscow City Court recognized the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Foundation for the Protection of Citizens' Rights (FZPG) and the headquarters of Alexei Navalny as extremist organizations. An appeals court later upheld this decision. After this, supporters of the opposition politician began to leave Russia en masse.