The Kuibyshevsky District Court of St. Petersburg fined activist Yevgenia Smetankina 20,000 rubles for a one-man picket in support of artist and LGBT activist Yulia Tsvetkova, accused of distributing pornography. This was reported by the lawyer from OVD-Info, Veronika Karagodina, who represented the interests of Smetankina in court.

The court left the former director of Open Russia in jail, and the Yakut shaman’s health deteriorated. We talk about the main news for June 15. The court in Krasnodar refused to change the preventive measure for the former director of Open Russia Andrei Pivovarov - he will remain in pre-trial detention. At the hearing, the defense provided evidence that the post on social networks, which formed the basis of the criminal case against the oppositionist, was not published by him.

The Ministry of Justice refused to exclude the Samara publication Park Gagarin from the register of "foreign agents" because of a subsidy from the Union of Journalists of Russia. this on his Telegram channel . reports Pavel Chikov, head of the Agora human rights group, Gagarin Park has filed an application to withdraw from the list of foreign agents. After checking, the Ministry of Justice found that in 2020 the publication received a subsidy from the Union of Journalists of Russia.

Relatives of Sergei Kuznetsov, a welder from the Moscow region, who was arrested in the case of justifying terrorism because of a post on VKontakte, cannot find him in a pre-trial detention center. One of the man’s friends reported this to OVD-Info. The fact that Kuznetsov was in custody became known on June 10. Since then, his relatives have not been able to find out which pretrial detention center the man is in.

— How did you start working with OVD-Info? In January 2017, by chance, I ended up at Chistye Prudy, where Mark Halperin was holding an action . At the event, I met [OVD-Info legal assistance coordinator] Alla Frolova, who was detained that day: she was giving an interview, and law enforcement officers did not like it. I followed her to the police station to help. At the same time, Halperin and several of his supporters were detained, I helped them in court.

Jehovah's Witness from Kazan, Konstantin Sannikov, who is in a pre-trial detention center, is denied visits with his wife. Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia write about this. Over the course of nine months, Sannikov was denied visits six times.

Yakut shaman Alexander Gabyshev announced a deterioration in health while in a psycho-neurological dispensary. This is reported by MBKh Media with reference to the coordinator of the Human Rights Postcard Alexei Pryanishnikov. At the last court session, Gabyshev complained of a constant feeling of weakness, dizziness and drowsiness. Employees of the medical institution also forbid him to use a mobile phone. The Yakut shaman has been on compulsory treatment for five months.

Before becoming a lawyer, Novgorodian Konstantin Markin was a GRU officer. He left the intelligence service because they refused to grant him parental leave. Through the ECHR, he achieved both leave and dismissal with compensation and housing. Now Markin defends detainees at protests. * — How did you start working with OVD-Info? * In January 2017, by chance, I ended up at Chistye Prudy, Mark Galperin held an action there .