The prosecutor requested five years in prison for Bashkir activist Ramila Saitova. The verdict will be announced on December 21. This is reported by RusNews.
The woman is charged with public calls for activities directed against state security (Part 2 of Article 280.4 of the Criminal Code) because of a video on YouTube, in which she asked mobilized soldiers to refuse to participate in military operations, to declare their unwillingness to “kill,” and to desert.
On May 16, FSB and MVD officers detained Saitova near the entrance to her home in Ufa and conducted a search. They confiscated the activist's phone, notebooks with notes, tablet, and storage media. Saitova refused to testify, citing Article 51 of the Constitution.
Ramilya Saitova was released from prison in the summer of 2022. In November 2021, she was convicted under the article on public calls for extremist activity (Part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced to three years in prison. The time spent in the pre-trial detention center, where she had been since November 2020, was counted towards her sentence, with one day counted as two. After her release from prison, the woman was detained to be questioned about whether she “experienced hostility on the basis of nationality” and whether she visited a drug addiction specialist or psychiatrist.
- On her personal VKontakte page, Ramilya Saitova calls herself the chairperson of the movement "The People of Bashkortostan for Fair Elections!", a member of the presidium of the "Congress of the Bashkir People" and secretary of the "Council of Bashkir Elders". In the summer of 2019, Saitova's candidacy was nominated in the elections for the head of Bashkortostan.
- In September 2020, the activist was sentenced to 10 days of arrest for the video "Where do we get so many Armenians?", in February 2020, she was arrested for five days for failure to pay a fine imposed after her detention while observing the September elections. In December 2019, the activist was fined 20 thousand rubles for publishing a video message in which she called for an uncoordinated rally in defense of nature.
- At the end of January, Saitova's car was stopped by traffic police officers, allegedly because they had a wanted poster for her. After she refused to get out of the car, the traffic police officer broke the side window and forcibly pulled Saitova out. As a result, a report was drawn up against her for disobeying a police officer (Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).