The Muscovite was detained by force at the airport and arrested three times in a row; he was persecuted because of the symbols of “Azov” in 2022

At the Zhukovsky airport in mid-May, security forces used force to detain Muscovite Timofey Rudenko, his acquaintance, who asked for anonymity, told Mediazona. After this, the courts sentenced him to administrative arrest three times.

On May 18, Rudenko was planning to fly to Kyrgyzstan. Relatives told the OVD-Info project that at the airport he was detained by men in masks without identification marks, who used a stun gun on him, put his head under the wheels of a car and offered to “atone for his guilt before his homeland” by joining the Wagner PMC.

The next day, the Ostankino District Court of Moscow arrested him for 15 days due to the fact that Rudenko, according to the security forces, swore and pestered passers-by at 3 a.m. on Mira Avenue (Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code). Upon leaving the special detention center, he was detained and arrested for 10 days on a similar issue.

Yesterday, when the second arrest was ending, Rudenko was not released again . He got through to his relatives and reported that he was taken from the Sakharovo special detention center to Khimki, near Moscow, where the city court sentenced him to another 13 days of arrest under the same article of petty hooliganism.

Rudenko’s mother, in a conversation with OVD-Info, suggested that he was being persecuted because of anti-war statements on the Internet.

In May 2022, a Muscovite was persecuted because of the symbols of the Azov battalion. According to the database of decisions of Moscow courts, police detained Timofey Rudenko on May 7 and in the evening “during a personal search” at the police department they confiscated from him certain “drawings” with the Ukrainian flag and Azov symbols. They drew up a protocol on the demonstration of prohibited symbols (Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code), but the judges twice returned it to the Ministry of Internal Affairs due to errors.

Despite this, Rudenko, starting from May 9, 2022, was given administrative arrests three times under the pretext that he swore in a public place. Twice the period was 10 days, and another time - 15 days.

The image of the Azov battalion chevrons was considered extremist in 2015. For stickers with their symbols, fines were imposed , and a criminal case was initiated against the Vladimir resident who drew the graffiti . In August 2022, after the battles for Mariupol, the Supreme Court of Russia recognized Azov itself as a terrorist organization, criminalizing its very participation in the battalion.