Persons and "Balaclavs"

In St. Petersburg, the security forces tore the concert of the Zero People group

They broke into the Cosmonaut club on Bronnitskaya Street on November 9 at 20.25: a concert scheduled for eight in the evening, did not even have time to begin. Armed representatives of law enforcement agencies ordered everyone who came to the concert (about 300 people were in the hall) to lie on the floor. Later, people were allowed to sit down and even get up, but only to those who did not show violent indignation.

- First, the security forces went beyond the scene along the right edge of the hall with lanterns, and then ordered everyone to go to the floor. They said not to get phones, not to shoot and not take a photo, ”says one of the eyewitnesses of the event.

“Nobody understood anything,” says the fan of the group Valery. - My friend and I were so scared that we burst into tears and then could not stop for two hours until they let us go. But even when people were released, no one explained anything to them. Between ourselves, we discussed that what happened could be connected with the attitude of the musicians towards him. (Recall, Zero People is an ANIMAL soloist site JAZ Alexander Krasovitsky, known for his anti-war statements.)

According to the "New" in the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, representatives of the FSB participated in the operation with the support of riot police and the Russian Guard. People began to withdraw from the club in groups several people after nine o’clock in the evening. At the output of each visitor, documents were checked, rewriting the data and checking with the database in the tablet. Verification of documents dragged on for almost two hours. Before the exit, the line accumulated, since not all people had documents with them. Some were able to confirm the identity with the help of the “State Service” resource, others called relatives and asked to send a photo of the documents.

The musicians themselves - Alexander Krasovitsky and Alexander Zarankin - were first taken to the dressing room for interrogation, which lasted about half an hour, and then led out of the club through the hall in front of those present.

The musicians were taken to the police department on Voznesensky Prospekt. The Concert with the participation of armed people in masks ended at about 23.00. The club left all the viewers, but one of the bought ticket for the concert was no longer lucky. She turned out to be 50-year-old Natalya Artemova from Moscow. Her disappointment from a spoiled evening resulted in a brawl with security forces. "I paid the money!" - The woman shouts in the video that appeared on the Web on the night of November 10. The footage shows how the policeman applied strength to the woman and threatened the presence of weapons. As a result, the metropolitan music lover spent the night at the police station and was released with an administrative violation protocol. However, the incident was not exhausted on this.

“At the moment, the criminal case against the guest from Moscow has not yet been instituted, an audit is being conducted, all circumstances are being studied,” said Sergey Kapitonov, senior assistant to the head of the Main Investigation Department of the RF IC of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg on the morning of November 10. - Most likely, this issue will be resolved after the interrogation of the injured employee of power structures.

And already at about 14 hours on November 10, the GSU of the IC of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg opened a criminal case against Natalia Artemova under two articles:

• Art. 318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Application of violence in relation to a representative of the authorities"),

• Art. 319 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("insulting a representative of power").

As the New Kapitonov specified, the defendant of the case, a 50-year-old psychologist-pedagogue from Moscow, is charged with at least one blow to the hip of OMON employee, as well as verbal insults. In the brawl, not an ordinary fighter of special forces, but one of the commanders of the St. Petersburg riot police, suffered. Artemova herself, according to preliminary information, was intoxicated. Now she can face up to five years in prison.

On Friday night, the members of the Zero People group posted a video shot after leaving the police station. The guys apologized to the audience for disrupting the concert. They also thanked the audience for their support and promised to hold a concert in St. Petersburg the next day.

The concert, which failed on November 9, was half-closed: information about it was not published on the club’s website, tickets were offered through a notification of an e-mail newsletter.

- Now we do not understand what to do with tickets. Is it time to demand money back or not yet? - said the "new" fan of the group Igor. - As far as I know, so far no one has contacted the return. Although almost all fans are surprised by the musicians that the tour continues, and the concert in St. Petersburg will be. It seems almost impossible now.

Official versions about the reasons for yesterday’s operation in the “Cosmonaut” are still not named. Neither in the St. Petersburg police headquarters, nor in the regional department of the FSB, they have not yet been given comments on this subject.

However, it is easy to guess why the concert was torn off. Z-Ploks and other pro-government resources are already playing out their agenda on musicians:

They recall the pacifist statements of Alexander Krasovitsky, his refusal to speak in the Crimea, switch to direct insults. Such an unhealthy interest in musicians is noticeable for a long time. In June, the Organization of the Call of the People even demanded to recognize them with foreign agents.