This report presents an analytical review of anti-extremist legislation and its misuse[1] in 2022. SOVA Center has been publishing these reports annually to summarize the results of monitoring carried out by our center continuously since the mid-2000s.

SUMMARY
LAWMAKING
On Discreditation, “Fakes” and Calls for Sanctions
On State Security
On Extremists
On “Rehabilitating Nazism”
On Information Control
On “Foreign Agents”
On the European Court of Human Rights
LAW ENFORCEMENT
Blocking the Flow of Information
Persecution for Anti-Government Statements : Calls for Extremist and Terrorist Activities : For Inciting Hatred : For Other Anti-Government Statements : For Display of Banned Symbols : For Discrediting the Russian Army and Officials : For Spreading Fakes About the “Special Operation” Motivated by Hatred : For Vandalism Motivated by Hatred : For Desecration of Burial Grounds : For Hooliganism Motivated by Hatred : Sanctions against Supporters of Alexei Navalny
Ban on Organizations of the Opposition
State on Guard of Morality : Sanctions for “Rehabilitating Nazism” : Sanctions for Insulting the Religious Feelings of Believers : Fighting School Shootings : Fighting Incitement to Hatred in Literary Texts
Persecution against Religious Associations : Jehovah’s Witnesses : Hizb ut-Tahrir : Tablighi Jamaat : Said Nursi Readers : Alla-Ayat : Administrative Sanctions for Distribution of Religious Literature
A BIT OF STATISTICS
APPENDICES
Appendix 1. CC Article 280³
Appendix 2. CC Article 207³ Part 2 Paragraph “e”
Appendix 3. CC Article 214 Part 2

And whether you like it or not, you are not asked. You just have to go on — that’s all. Take us, the rabbits, for instance. Everybody eats us. It would seem that we have reason to complain. But after due consideration a complaint like that is hardly justified. For one thing, the one who eats us knows perfectly why he does so, and even if we were to lodge a just complaint it wouldn't stop anyone from eating us. Anyway, one won't eat more than one should, and one won't eat less, either. The statistics published by the Ministry of the Interior…”

But at this point the rabbit usually fell asleep, for statistics had a stupefying effect on him. But after a nap he would resume his reasoning again, as soundly and as logically as ever.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, The Rational Rabbit[2]

Summary

The outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine in late February 2022 caused noticeable and widespread discontent in Russian society that found expression in public actions on the streets, numerous open letters, personal public statements, dissemination of information, and various forms of visual protest. In this situation, the authorities took various steps, both reactive and proactive. All three branches – the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary – were involved in countering the protest. Nevertheless, the protest activity has continued on a daily basis. Subsequently, in the course of the year, thousands of people were charged in criminal and administrative cases, which utilized the old anti-extremist legal norms as well as the newly adopted legislation restricting civil liberties.

The fight against extremism fits quite organically with the general repressive policy of the state. In many ways, the anti-extremist norms form the core, the basis of legislation on ideological and political control as well as its enforcement. This legislation has been expanding, and many new restrictions apply to acts that were not classified as “crimes of an extremist nature” in the Law on Counteracting Extremist Activity.[3] However, our analysis has always gone beyond the formal boundaries – we define anti-extremist policy as one that criminalizes actions motivated politically or ideologically. So, for example, in the year under review, we expanded the scope of our monitoring to include the enforcement of new legal norms that punished calling for sanctions against Russia and discrediting the actions of the Russian army and officials abroad. On the other hand, we only partially included in our review the cases related to fakes against the Russian army and officials, taking into account only the subset for which the relevant charges included the hate motive. It must be noted that in 2022 the courts managed to issue only about a dozen verdicts under new criminal articles, but approximately a hundred such cases were opened. In connection with the events in Ukraine, about three dozen people were prosecuted for vandalism and hooliganism motivated by political or ideological hatred; half of these cases already went to trial and ended in guilty verdicts.

In general, we classified 119 criminal sentences against 192 people issued in 2022 under articles on extremism and other closely related norms as inappropriate. Meanwhile, over 250 people became defendants in newly opened criminal cases.

An unprecedented number of people – about five and a half thousand – were brought to court under the administrative article on discrediting the army and government officials, which is used for the first relevant prosecution of a given year. The Supreme Court has not yet released the full 2022 statistics on administrative sanctions for displaying prohibited symbols and inciting hatred, but, extrapolating the existing data for the first half of the year, we can estimate their number as also close to five thousand. Besides the article on discreditation, our monitoring revealed about 300 cases of inappropriate sanctions under other articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses that are relevant to our area of interest. Citizens and organizations were punished primarily for anti-government statements in various forms.

Of course, the targeted persecution of opposition activists continued as well. The number of defendants in the case of the community of supporters of Alexei Navalny has been growing. Members of the opposition faced charges in numerous cases, both criminal and administrative, that fall within the scope of our monitoring. The youth opposition movement Vesna [the Spring] was recognized as an extremist organization.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 2022, almost 500 crimes were classified as calls for terrorism on the Internet (50% more than a year earlier) and another almost 500 crimes were prosecuted under the article on calls for extremist activity on the Internet. Thus, the alarming trend towards intensifying law enforcement under these articles, which has emerged in recent years, continues unabated. We hardly ever include these cases in our section, since in the vast majority of known cases, the statements that caused complaints from law enforcement agencies, in fact, contained calls for violent actions – very often against representatives of the authorities. However, as was the case for Article 282 CC on incitement to hatred, we believe that the public danger of these statements is not always sufficient to merit criminal liability. Moreover, the punishments imposed by the courts are disproportionately severe. It is worth reminding that Article 282 CC was partially decriminalized under public pressure, although the scope of its application was relatively modest. Thus, there is a precedent for shifting the approach in the fight against online propaganda, but the situation in the country has since changed dramatically. The authorities do not even consider liberalization, and, given the ideological pressure against citizens and organizations and the complete suppression of the independent media, the public cannot convey its opinions to the state. Our report also covers the internal information blockade established by the authorities and the further development of the legislation on “foreign agents.”

In conditions when law enforcement agencies largely concentrate their efforts on suppressing protests against the “special operation,” their activity in other, more “traditional” directions has somewhat decreased. So, if we consider the task of counteracting banned religious organizations, we see that 118 Jehovah's Witnesses and 52 individuals charged with involvement in the Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir (recognized as a terrorist organization) were convicted in 2022, but, for the entire year, we only know of 77 Jehovah's Witnesses who faced new charges, and nine people were arrested for their involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Contrary to expectations, the ideologically important article on the “rehabilitation of Nazism” did not grow much in terms of the scale of its application, although two dozen sentences issued under it still gave it the leading position in our statistics of inappropriate criminal verdicts. The article on insulting the feelings of believers was rarely used – only five people were convicted under it and six more became defendants in new criminal cases.

At the same time, however, prosecutions for involvement in the AUE criminal subculture, recognized as an extremist organization in 2020 on unclear grounds, continued throughout the year. The school shooter subculture was identified as a terrorist organization known as “Columbine,” and teenagers faced charges for involvement in it. Individuals who romanticize criminality or mass murder obviously cannot be viewed as members of organized structures with a particular ideology. Thus, enforcement of anti-extremist and anti-terrorist legislation is increasingly crossing into the realm of unreasonable, not only in showing a disproportionate repressive response but also in determining its targets.

Lawmaking

On Discreditation, “Fakes” and Calls for Sanctions

On March 4, the State Duma of Russia adopted laws amending the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) and the Criminal Code (CC) under emergency procedure (not in the form of separate bills, but by amending other bills that had already been adopted in the first reading). These laws dealt with calling for sanctions against Russia, spreading fake news about the Russian armed forces, discrediting them, and calling for “obstruction to their use.” The laws were approved by the Federation Council on the same day and signed by the president in the evening. The amendments of March 25, which provided legal protection against spreading fakes and discrediting the work of Russian government agencies abroad, were added to the norms adopted on March 4.

Under the law of March 4, a new article 20.3.3 was introduced in the CAO establishing liability for “public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for protection of the interests of the country and its citizens or for keeping international peace and security, including calls to prevent the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for the indicated purposes.” The article provided for punishment in the form of a fine of 30 thousand to 100 thousand rubles for citizens, from 100 thousand to 300 thousand rubles for officials, and from 300 thousand to a million rubles for legal entities. In accordance with the amendments to the CC, in case of repeated violation within a year, citizens became liable under a new Article 280³ CC. It had two parts, depending on the gravity of the consequences – punishment was provided in the form of a fine from 100 thousand to two million rubles, compulsory labor for up to three years, arrest for up to six months, or imprisonment for up to five years.

The same amendments introduced Article 20.3.4 CAO. It stipulated punishment for calls for imposing or extending political or economic sanctions against the Russian Federation, citizens of the Russian Federation, or Russian legal entities. The punishment for the first such violation within a year took the form of a fine of 30 to 50 thousand rubles for citizens, from 100 to 200 thousand for officials, and from 300 to 500 thousand for legal entities. Criminal liability followed for a repeated violation under the new Article 284² СС, which provided for a fine of up to 500 thousand rubles or in the amount of full salary for a period of up to three years, up to three years of restriction of freedom, up to three years of compulsory labor, up to six months of arrest, or imprisonment for up to three years with a fine of up to 200 thousand rubles or the full salary for a period of up to a year.

We believe that norms like the above should not be part of the legislation, since they unduly restrict freedom of expression and opinions on a matter of particular public importance.

In our opinion, new Article 207³ СС, which established responsibility for “public dissemination, under the guise of reliable reports, of deliberately false information containing data on the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for protection of the interests of the country and its citizens or for keeping international peace and security” is unnecessary. The article has three parts with the punishment varying from a fine (ranging from 700 thousand rubles to five million rubles or the full salary for up to five years), corrective labor for up to a year, compulsory labor for up to five years, or imprisonment for up to 15 years, depending on the aggravating circumstances, with additional restrictions if the violation leads to serious consequences.

On State Security

On July 14, the president signed amendments to the state security legislation. The law introduced new articles into the Criminal Code that specified punishments for the following offenses:

• public calls for actions directed against state security (Article 280⁴ CC);
• repeated propaganda or public display of prohibited symbols (Article 282⁴, see below);
• repeated violations of the procedure of installation, operation and modernization of so-called “technical means of countering threats” (tekhnicheskikh sredstv protivodeystviya ugrozam, TSPU) by telecommunications operators (Article 274² CC);
• establishing and maintaining relations of “cooperation on a confidential basis with a representative of a foreign state, an international or foreign organization to assist them in activities knowingly directed against the security of the Russian Federation” by Russian citizens (if their actions do not constitute a corpus delicti for the charges of treason) (Article 275¹ CC);
• violation of the requirement to protect state secrets by leaving the country or transporting data storage media abroad (Article 283²).

The law included provisions establishing criminal liability for participation by citizens or stateless persons residing in Russia in any armed conflicts abroad that “contradict the interests of the Russian Federation” (addition to Article 208 CC on the organization of an illegal armed formation); defecting to the enemy during an armed conflict (addition to Article 275 CC on treason); transferring, gathering, stealing or storing information that can be used against the Russian armed forces during an armed conflict (addition to Article 276 on espionage); participation in activities of an undesirable organization not only in Russia but also on any other territory (addition to Article 284¹). The punishment for mercenarism under Article 359 CC also became more severe.

 

On December 29, the president signed the amendments to the Criminal Code. The amendments criminalized aiding sabotage, training for the purpose of sabotage, and organizing sabotage or participating in a sabotage community (new Articles 281¹, 281² and 281³ CC). These offenses would carry penalties of up to 20 years of incarceration or life imprisonment. In addition, the list of circumstances aggravating punishment for general crimes (Article 63 CC) came to include an entry on crimes committed in order to promote, justify and support sabotage. In accordance with a separate law, suspects and defendants under new articles were to be entered on the Rosfinmonitoring List of persons “involved” in extremist and terrorist activities.

On Extremists

Propaganda, demonstration and production of banned symbols were “partially criminalized” as part of the law on state security signed on July 14. The law introduced a new Criminal Code article, Article 282⁴ CC (repeated propaganda or public display of Nazi attributes or symbols, or attributes or symbols of extremist organizations or other attributes or symbols, propaganda or public demonstration of which is prohibited by federal laws), thus criminalizing repeated violations of Article 20.3 CAO. The new article provided for harsh penalties.

Part 1 of this article punished repeated propaganda or public display of prohibited paraphernalia or symbols. It imposed the following sanctions: a fine ranging from 600 thousand to a million rubles or equal to two to three times annual income, mandatory labor for up to 480 hours, community service for one to two years, compulsory labor for up to four years, or imprisonment for the same term.

Article 282⁴ Part 2 stipulated penalties for the manufacture or sale of banned paraphernalia or symbols for the purpose of propaganda or acquisition of such symbols for sale or propaganda: a fine ranging from 600 thousand to a million rubles or equal to two to three times annual income, community service for a period of up to 480 hours, corrective labor for a term of one to two years, compulsory labor for up to four years, or imprisonment for the same term.

 

On March 14, the president signed the law on remote electronic voting; the corresponding bill was submitted to the State Duma in December 2021 and adopted in the first reading in late January, but by its second reading on March 10, it already was significantly amended. Among other norms, the law extended the loss of passive suffrage to everyone convicted of extremist crimes for a five-year period from the day the conviction is removed or extinguished. The norm on depriving individuals involved in the activities of extremist or terrorist organizations of passive suffrage for three or five years after the organization’s ban depending on their status in the organization was modified as well to apply to presidential elections. The legal norms adopted in April 2021, which require candidates to inform the voters about their “foreign agent” status or their “affiliation with a person or entity performing the functions of a foreign agent” in various forms, were extended to the presidential elections as well.

In late June, the Constitutional Court of Russia rejected the complaints of Pskov politicians Lev Shlosberg and Nikolai Kuzmin against the legislative norms that deprive those “involved” in the activities of extremist and terrorist organizations of the right to run for office. Shlosberg and Kuzmin were not allowed to participate in the elections on this very basis for participating in actions in support of Alexei Navalny in January 2021. The claimants insisted that the electoral legislation’s norms on “involvement” did not meet the legal certainty requirement, contained regulations that constituted voting rights discrimination, and did not pass the proportionality test ensuring a fair balance between the right’s restriction and reasonable necessity. Furthermore, these norms restricted the right to freedom of speech and dissemination of information; gave retroactive effect to the law that worsens a citizen’s situation and neutralized the constitutional judicial protection guarantees thus leading to arbitrary enforcement of the legislation.

The Constitutional Court, however, stated that the passive suffrage restriction – by analogy with banning individuals sentenced to imprisonment for committing grave and particularly grave crimes from running for public office – constituted a special constitutional and legal disqualifying obstacle to holding elected public positions associated with increased reputational requirements faced by those who hold public authority. According to the Constitutional Court, the constitutional prohibition on using laws retroactively did not apply to such restrictions. The Constitutional Court’s opinion also stated that the concept of “involvement” used in the law is sufficiently detailed – a passive suffrage ban “can be caused only by the presence of court-established facts that objectively and unambiguously testify to the citizen’s actions specifically related to the goals and (or) forms of activity found to determine the association’s extremist nature.” At the same time, the courts should not be arbitrary and unreasonable in establishing the grounds for the ban; in particular, “support through statements” should refer specifically to the goals and forms of activity, due to which the organization was recognized as extremist. As the Constitutional Court pointed out, resolving the specific question of whether the actions of Shlosberg and Kuzmin were correctly qualified as evidence of their “involvement” in an extremist organization did not fall within its mandate.

 

The authorities took additional steps to restrict the rights of persons included on the Rosfinmonitoring List of Extremists and Terrorists – that is, not only those found guilty but also suspects and defendants in criminal cases that involved charges of extremism or terrorism. On December 19, Putin signed amendments to the Air Code of the Russian Federation, which forbade hiring persons included on the Rosfinmonitoring List for any jobs in the aviation industry.

Legal initiatives approved by the president on July 14, included a law creating a databank of extremist materials and the corresponding court decisions as well as a separate register of persons involved in the activities of extremist or terrorist organizations. According to the regulation, which should come into force one year after its publication, the Ministry of Justice has to enter materials recognized by the courts as extremist into the databank, while also adding this information to the already existing Federal List of Extremist Materials. The databank would also include copies of court decisions on recognizing certain materials as extremist. Only officials are expected to have access to this repository.

Meanwhile, the law’s provision on creating a unified register of individuals involved in the activities of extremist or terrorist organizations including information about persons who are founders, leaders or staff members of an extremist or terrorist organization, was expected to come into force immediately after publication, but we have no information on any steps to implement it.

 

Two bills submitted to the State Duma in September were adopted in the first reading on December 20.

One of them expands the scope of Article 20.29 CAO on the production and mass distribution of extremist materials and the other expands the definition of extremist materials. The former involves extending Article 20.29 CAO to cover the production and distribution of materials that meet the definition of extremist materials under the existing federal laws (or in other relevant federal laws that may be adopted in the future) but are not on the Federal List of Extremist Materials – that is, not banned by a court decision. Thus, sanctions for posting portraits of Nazi leaders may be imposed. If the bill is adopted, the extent of court discretion when applying Article 20.29 CAO will expand drastically, and lawmakers will have an incentive to further expand the definition of extremist materials. In fact, the initiative is specifically intended to provide additional grounds for sanctions, as confirmed by the second bill from the same package. It proposes adding “cartographic and other images and products that challenge the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” to the definition of “extremist materials” provided in the framework Law “On Countering Extremist Activity.” That is, if the draft law is adopted, it will ban the publication of maps that “visibly assign” parts of the Russian Federation’s territory to the territory of other states.

On December 29, the government sent its review of the maps bill to the State Duma with a recommendation to enhance it for the second reading. The government noted that it was not clear under what criteria the distribution or public display of such images would be considered a challenge to the territorial integrity of the country – specifically, whether the law pertains to cartographic images of Russia’s territory “currently in circulation and distributed” “and other similar materials published earlier, prior to the decisions on admitting new subjects to the Russian Federation.” It is also unclear what to do with the maps that were produced, but not yet put into circulation. The review stated that maps “as a rule, perform only an informative function,” and classifying them as extremist materials implies the presence of intent to challenge the territorial integrity of the country. We find the government's arguments convincing. In addition, in our opinion, discussing the status of certain territories should be limited only when it involves calls for violent separatism, while the proposed restriction would constitute an excessive and unreasonable intrusion on freedom of expression and dissemination of information.

On “Rehabilitating Nazism”

On April 16, the bill establishing administrative responsibility for equating the “goals, decisions and actions” of the leadership of the USSR and Nazi Germany and for “denying the decisive role of the Soviet people” in its defeat was signed into law. A new legal norm, Article 13.48 with two parts to punish for the first and repeated offenses, was added to the CAO. Depending on the part, the article imposed on citizens a fine of one to two thousand rubles or arrest for up to 15 days, on officials – a fine of two to 20 thousand rubles or disqualification for a period of six months to a year, and on legal entities – from 10 to 100 thousand rubles or suspension of activities for up to 90 days. Roskomnadzor staff and the police received a mandate to compile reports under Article 13.48 and the prosecutors – to open the corresponding cases. The wording of the new CAO article contains no explanations as to which statements can be interpreted as “equating actions” and “denying the decisive role.” Establishing responsibility for an offense described in this manner indicated a new step in restricting freedom of speech – in this case, restricting freedom of peaceful historical discussion. It is worth reminding that this law, like other administrative norms, is also applicable to statements made prior to its adoption, if they continue to be available online.

 

On December 29, the president signed a law granting the St. George's Ribbon the status of a symbol of Russia's military glory. Thus, its desecration came to entail sanctions under Parts 3–4 of Article 354¹ CC on the rehabilitation of Nazism, ranging from millions of rubles in fines to five years of imprisonment. In fact, law enforcement agencies already treated the ribbon as a symbol of military glory – we know of several criminal cases initiated under Article 354¹ CC for its desecration. However, the defendants in some of these cases perceived the ribbon not as a symbol of victory in the Great Patriotic War but as an attribute of one of the parties to the conflict that began in 2014 in the south-east of Ukraine. The defendants showed disrespect for the ribbon not to discredit the victory over Nazism but to criticize the current political course of the Russian authorities. We question the notion that people should face criminal prosecution to protect individual symbols from manifestations of criticism, even if extreme. Notably, in General Comment No. 34 to Article 19 (freedom of opinion and expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee expresses its concern about laws on such acts as disrespect for the flag and symbols.

On Information Control

On July 14, the president signed a law expanding the extrajudicial blocking mechanisms based on requests of the Prosecutor General's Office. The law provided for blocking resources that discredited the activities of the Russian armed forces and government agencies abroad, spread “fakes” about them, or called for sanctions against Russia and its citizens. In addition, the Prosecutor General's Office was given the mandate to block the websites (or their mirrors) for repeatedly posting on their pages any type of illegal information subject to restrictions, whether extrajudicially or by court decisions, (except for pirated content, information discrediting honor and dignity, and violations of the law on personal data) permanently through Roskomnadzor. The law stated that access restrictions on resources blocked for their repeated violations could not be removed at all.

Other provisions of the same law drastically expanded the powers of the Prosecutor General's Office with respect to the media. The agency gained the right, in consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to prohibit the activities of foreign media in Russia as a response to other countries closing Russian media outlets. The new norms stipulated that the registration and broadcasting licenses of such media outlets were to be revoked. Once the prosecutor's office decides to terminate the activities of a foreign media outlet, the ban is expected to encompass the production and distribution of its informational materials, including via other mass media and the Internet, as well as possession of such materials with the intent to distribute them.

Moreover, the Prosecutor General's Office also gained the right to temporarily or permanently suspend registration and broadcasting licenses of Russian media resources for disseminating any “inaccurate information” or “discrediting” the actions of the Armed Forces and officials abroad, as well as for “disrespecting the authorities,” calling for sanctions, rallies or riots, and “propaganda, rationalization and (or) justification” of extremism. The law also declared that media resources and their staff faced responsibility for reprinting materials from other mass media that contained any such information. The first two violations would lead to the suspension of the media activities for up to three and up to six months respectively, but the suspension could be rescinded earlier by Roskomnadzor’s decision. The law allowed the General Prosecutor's Office to permanently terminate the registration and broadcasting license of the implicated media outlets without a court decision in case of “repeated” dissemination of illegal information. The activities of mass media in Russia came under the total control of the Prosecutor General's Office creating the conditions for imposing the information blockade of the country from within.

 

Another law signed on July 14 stipulated administrative liability for violating the “landing” legislation for foreign Internet companies in Russia or the government’s blocking orders. The law introduced a number of changes to the CAO. Telecommunication operators were to face more severe penalties for repeated failure to block or unblock Internet resources as well as for violating the TSPU installation procedures. Another newly introduced CAO article provided for liability in case of violation of the requirements for passing traffic through the TSPU; the third violation under both articles came to entail criminal liability under Article 274² CC.

Articles newly included in the CAO imposed penalties for violation of the established rules on “foreign persons” and Russian citizens performing online operations on behalf of companies subject to “landing” in Russia. Foreigners who violate the ban on collecting personal data also became liable under the new legislation.

The law also extended the punishment under the article on failure to submit reports to Roskomnadzor to hosting providers, who do not provide reliable information about the owner of a resource subject to “landing.”

The article penalizing violations of the law on advertising was amended by adding punishment for dissemination of advertisements by “foreign entities” or on websites of “foreign entities” in violation of Roskomnadzor bans.

The CAO article on search engines’ responsibility was supplemented with several new parts that punish search engines for failure to inform users that a foreign company has violated Russian law, for failure to exclude links to such companies and for repeated violations. All the above-mentioned CAO provisions stipulated large fines that can reach millions of rubles for legal entities.

 

On December 5, the president approved a blatantly discriminatory law that introduced a ban on the dissemination of information “promoting non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences, pedophilia, or sex change.” In addition to imposing restrictions on such information specifically, the law gave Roskomnadzor the right to delegate the task of monitoring various types of illegal content to a third-party organization designated by the government. The law on consumer protection was also amended to prohibit the sale of any product “containing information the dissemination of which entails administrative or criminal liability.”

On “Foreign Agents”

On July 14, the President signed a law that consolidated and systematized numerous previously adopted norms that regulated the activities of various “foreign agents.” The law stated that a “foreign agent” (rather than a person or association “acting as a foreign agent,” as it was previously stated) was a status that could be assigned to a Russian or foreign (the latter was also a new addition) individual or legal entity (not only an NPO, as in the prior version) or even to a group of persons who had received “support” and (or) were “under other forms of foreign influence” and carried out certain activities. The bill defined foreign influence as not only any financial, property, organizational, methodological, scientific, technical, or other such assistance received from foreign sources but also as “influencing a person, including through coercion, persuasion, and (or) other means.”

The following types of activities were listed as the grounds for recognizing a person as a “foreign agent”: political activity (in a very broad definition given in the law on NGOs), targeted collection of information on Russia’s military and military technology activities, “the dissemination of messages and materials intended for an unlimited circle of people, and (or) participation in the creation of such messages and materials,” as well as financing of any such activity.

The exceptions to “political activity” included activities in the sphere of science, culture, art, healthcare, social services and social protection, protection of human life, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood, family and traditional family values, social support for the disabled, promotion of healthy lifestyles, environmental protection, and charity. However, any such activity would not be considered “political” only inasmuch as it “does not contradict the national interests of the Russian Federation, the foundations of the public order of the Russian Federation, and other values protected by the Constitution of the Russian Federation.”

Contrary to the legislators’ repeated assurances that the “foreign agent” status did not imply discrimination, the law included a list of restrictions imposed on “foreign agents,” some of which were not legally mandated previously. Thus, according to the new law, individuals listed in the register could not be appointed to official positions or perform various functions in public official bodies or participate in election campaigns and referendums (including nominations of or support for candidates). A public official or an individual recognized as a “foreign agent” could be denied access to state secrets. Foreign agents were banned from organizing or sponsoring public events or performing educational activities “aimed at minors and (or) pedagogical activities in the state and municipal educational organizations.” They were no longer allowed to carry out educational activities “in relation to minors and (or) pedagogical activities in the state and municipal educational organizations,” to produce information products for minors, act as experts in the state environmental reviews, operate significant objects of critical information infrastructure or ensure their safety.

A number of financial restrictions were imposed as well. Foreign agents lost their right to state financial support (including those related to creative endeavors). The funds of associations recognized as “foreign agents” could not be insured. Foreign agents could no longer use a simplified system of taxation, accounting and reporting and became subject to the same restrictions as foreign citizens not allowed to invest in business entities of strategic importance for the country’s defense and security.

All these restrictions were introduced by a separate law of December 5, after the framework law came into force. For some reason, this document also included amendments to the federal law “On Meetings, Rallies, Demonstrations, Processions and Pickets,” which, once again, significantly restricted the right (not just of “foreign agents” but of all citizens) to hold meetings by reducing public areas where meetings can be held.

According to the framework law, information about individuals affiliated with “foreign agents” were to be compiled in a separate register (the document described who should receive such a status, including all employees of organizations recognized as “foreign agents”), although they were not subject to the requirements and the restrictions imposed on actual “foreign agents.”

The law also described the obligations of “foreign agents” to label materials related to their foreign agent activities and relevant interactions with government agencies (labeling of personal materials by individuals is not required) and to compile and submit regular reports to government agencies. Under the law, the Russian government was to determine the specifics of labeling materials, and on November 22, it approved the set of rules similar to those in force for “foreign agent” mass media since 2020.”

The framework law also outlined the procedures for state bodies to control the activities of “foreign agents” and identify possible legal violations including the procedures for scheduled and unscheduled inspections. The Ministry of Justice is expected to provide “foreign agents” with binding instructions to be executed within a month.

The framework law also listed the possible sanctions for violations that included administrative and criminal responsibility, liquidation of the association, and blocking of information resources that belong to “foreign agents.” In late December, the president signed amendments to bring the criminal and administrative norms pertaining to the activities of “foreign agents” in line with the framework law and partially increase their severity. Articles 19.7.5-2, 19.7.5-4 and 19.34.1 CAO, which previously regulated various violations in the activities of “foreign agents,” were removed from the code, and Article 19.34 CAO was expanded to include nine parts covering the activities of “foreign agents” of all stripes.

The amendments removed the reference to “malice” from Article 330¹ CC on legal violations by “foreign agents.” Instead, it was established that liability under Parts 1 and 2 of this article follows after a “foreign agent” faces liability twice in the preceding 12 months under any part of Article 19.34 CAO. Meanwhile, the sanctions provided by the current version of Article 330¹ CC, did not change, but the punishment under Article 239 CC (creating a non-profit organization that infringes on the personality and rights of citizens) became more severe, both for the activities of NGOs encouraging citizens to refuse to perform civic duties, and for creating associations whose activities involve violence against citizens. The maximum sanctions for these acts reached six and seven years of imprisonment, respectively.

Meanwhile, in June, the ECHR issued a judgment in the case of Ecodefence and Others v. Russia, based on a number of complaints by Russian NGOs (61 applicants, including SOVA Center) recognized as entities performing the functions of a “foreign agent.” The applicants contested the status as well as various restrictions and sanctions prescribed in the Foreign Agents Act. The NGOs recognized as “foreign agents” faced significant difficulties in their work; some of them had to disband, and some were eliminated by the state. The ECHR ruled that the Russian government had not shown relevant and sufficient reasons for creating a special “foreign agent” status. According to the court, Russia also imposed additional reporting and accounting requirements on organizations registered as “foreign agents,” restricted their access to funding options, and punished any breaches of the Foreign Agents Act in an unpredictable and disproportionately severe manner. The cumulative result of these restrictions – whether by design or effect – was a legal regime that placed a significant “chilling effect” on the search or acceptance of any amount of foreign funding, however insignificant, in a context where opportunities for domestic funding are rather limited, especially for politically or socially sensitive issues or domestically unpopular causes. The ECHR concluded that these measures could not be considered “necessary in a democratic society,” and, therefore, Russia violated the applicants’ right to freedom of assembly and association, guaranteed by Article 11 of the European Convention interpreted in the light of Article 10 on the right to freedom of expression. The applicants were awarded compensation, which they could not receive at the time due to Russia’s refusal to comply with the ECHR decisions issued after March 15, 2022.

On the European Court of Human Rights

On March 23, the ECHR ruled that the Russian Federation would cease to be a High Contracting Party to the Convention on Human Rights on September 16, 2022. Meanwhile, the Court continued to review complaints against the Russian Federation regarding the actions or inaction of the latter preceding this date. Russia was expected to comply with the decisions that pertained to it, even if issued after September 16.

The ECHR decision was based on the fact that on March 16, in response to the actions of the Russian authorities in Ukraine, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution on the cessation of membership of the Russian Federation to the Council of Europe effective the same day. The Committee ruled that Russia had violated the organization's statute, which stipulates that “every member of the Council of Europe must accept the principles of the rule of law and the enjoyment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and collaborate sincerely and effectively” in order to achieve “a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realizing the ideals and principles, which are their common heritage, and facilitating their economic and social progress.” In fact, the expulsion procedure started on February 25, when Russia's membership in the Council of Europe was suspended. On March 15, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted the opinion that Russia could no longer remain a member of the organization.

The decision of the ECHR was related to the fact that on March 15, in response to the actions of the Russian authorities in Ukraine, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution on the exclusion of Russia from the organization starting from the same day. The Committee considered that Russia violated the organization's statute stating that “each member of the Council of Europe must recognize the principle of the rule of law and the principle that all persons under its jurisdiction should enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms and cooperate sincerely and actively” in the name of achieving “greater unity among its members for the sake of protecting and realizing the ideals and principles that are their common heritage and promoting their economic and social progress.” In fact, the exclusion procedure was launched on February 25, when Russia's membership in the Council of Europe was suspended. On March 15, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted the conclusion that Russia could no longer remain a member of the organization.

On June 11, Vladimir Putin signed laws amending the Criminal Procedure Code and other legislative acts. They provided for terminating Russia's execution of the judgments issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after March 15, 2022. Meanwhile, the compensations awarded by the ECHR decisions issued before this date would continue to be paid out until 2023.

However, the ECHR continued to review cases against Russia until September 16 and issued several decisions relevant to our subject matter in 2022. The most important of them – the decision on the complaint by Russian Jehovah's Witnesses – is described below in greater detail.

Law Enforcement

Blocking the Flow of Information

Through the efforts of the authorities, the information space in Russia changed dramatically in March 2022. Since late February, mass media (including those previously recognized as “foreign agents”) and social and political resources were bombarded with claims from state agencies. Roskomnadzor started blocking resources at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office in accordance with Article 15.3 of the federal law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection,” which provided for restricting access to materials containing, in particular, “inaccurate socially significant information distributed under the guise of reliable messages,” as well as calls for public actions without permits, calls for extremism, and support for or justification of extremist activities.

 Based on the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office of February 24, hundreds of websites were blocked in the following weeks, including Ukrainian resources, websites of BBC, Deutsche Welle, Bild, BBC Russian Service, Voice of America, all Radio Liberty websites as well as Meduza, Bellingcat Mediazona, Novye Izvestiya, Bumaga, Echo of the Caucasus, Caucasian Knot, Snob, LentaChel, 7X7, TJournal, The Village, Republic and many others. The Euronews TV channel was taken off the air.

The following months brought new restrictions, including the ones that utilized new legislation on disseminating false or defamatory information about the use of the military. Access was blocked to major foreign publications and channels, such as the Telegraph, Die Welt and Radio France Internationale, Delfi, popular Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, and Slovak periodical Denník N among others. Russian-language resources continued to be blocked as well: the independent news aggregator The TrueStory was shut down immediately after its creation, and the sites of the publications KavPolit, Kholod, Agentura.ru, Provereno.Media, and others, as well as Mult.Ru with its Masyanya animation series, were blocked as well. In early February 2023, the Roskomsvoboda project counted six thousand of websites and links blocked based only on the request by the Prosecutor General's Office dated February 24, 2022.[4]

Upon request from Roskomnadzor, numerous media outlets were forced to remove or edit materials about the events in Ukraine. In March, under pressure from the authorities, many media outlets had to stop their operations in one way or another, among them Novaya Gazeta, which later, in September, had its license revoked (the newspaper’s employees created a new media outlet abroad, which was immediately blocked in Russia) and the Echo of Moscow radio station, which was taken off the air and then liquidated by the decision of its board of directors, including its website and social media accounts. TV Rain was suspended and proceeded later abroad. Colta and Znak.com were also suspended and did not resume (the website of the latter was completely shut down). The BBC Russian Service announced that its editorial office would continue its work outside the country. American TV channels CBS News and ABC News, CNN and Bloomberg news agencies, Canadian CBC, and German ARD and ZDF channels also announced that they were terminating their work in Russia.

The websites of leading international human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were blocked as well. The representative offices of these organizations were later closed by order of the Ministry of Justice along with 13 others. They were removed from the register of branches and representative offices of international organizations and foreign non-profit non-governmental organizations for unspecified violations.

Censorship also affected social networks. On March 4, Facebook and Twitter were blocked under the law on “sanctions” for unreasonably restricting the distribution of certain Russian media materials. Roskomnadzor explained that the ruling followed Facebook’s decision to block the pages of RIA Novosti, Zvezda, Sputnik, RT, Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru as well as Twitter’s dissemination of “inaccurate socially significant information on the subject of a special military operation in Ukraine.” Roskomnadzor also demanded that the TikTok administration explain the removal of RIA Novosti stories from its platform, but TikTok proactively limited its operations in Russia on March 6 in response to the law on fakes. Then, on March 14, Instagram was blocked in Russia for publishing calls for violent actions against the Russian military.

On March 11, the Prosecutor General's Office filed a claim with the Supreme Court to recognize Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as an extremist company. Apparently, the court was initially supposed to recognize all the activities of the company as extremist, but then the demands were reduced to the distribution of Facebook and Instagram. On the same day, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against unnamed employees of the corporation under Article 280 CC (calls for extremism) and Article 205¹ CC (contributing to terrorist activity). The case was based on the statement made on that day by the Meta leadership – the corporation announced its decision not to delete posts that called for violent actions against the Russian troops located on the Ukrainian territory, indicating, however, that the ban on calls to violence against other citizens of Russia still stands. Meta later changed its position and declared Russophobia and calls for violence against citizens of the Russian Federation unacceptable, but this change did not affect the court's decision.

The court ruled to ban Meta's activities related to the “distribution of its products, Facebook and Instagram, on the territory of the Russian Federation due to their extremist activities.” The decision against Meta is unique in the history of Russian legal proceedings in extremism-related cases, since in this case, it was the organization’s activities that were recognized as extremist, but not the organization itself, its websites or its individual materials. Since the current Russian legislation does not provide for such a ban, its legal consequences are unclear – recognizing Meta's activities as extremist created a situation of legal uncertainty. Although the court decision explicitly stated that the measures of judicial protection stipulated in it “do not limit the use of Meta's software products by individuals and legal entities not participating in activities prohibited by law,” Russian users of Facebook and Instagram still become potential offenders. This situation created fear and insecurity – probably exactly the effect the authorities have been counting on, since their efforts are intended to force citizens to switch to Russian platforms controlled by law enforcement agencies.

The blocking of media platforms continued – WikiArt, Depositphotos, Patreon, Jooble, Grammarly, Chess.com and several other gaming sites were blocked in the course of the year based on their users’ statements about the events in Ukraine.

Anonymizers were also blocked for obvious reasons, including the Tor project site and the VPN applications (separate steps were also taken to obstruct the operation of these applications).

In early February 2023, the Roskomsvoboda project reported that, based on the results of its monitoring of the Unified Register of Banned Websites, about seven thousand websites had been blocked for publishing information about the special military operation, both at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office and based on court decisions. Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov in his interview with Izvestia in January said that “We monitor and block all resources that speculate on people's anxieties and disseminate false information. In 2022, Roskomnadzor received over 1,700 demands for extrajudicial restriction of access to information on the Internet, instant messengers and social networks, compared to 650 in 2021. Based on these requests, in 2022 alone, Roskomnadzor blocked or removed publications from more than 190 thousand Internet pages, including those that disseminated unreliable socially significant information about the special military operation (there were 125 thousand such materials).”[5] Thus, Roskomsvoboda notes, not all the blocked resources are added to the Unified Register of Banned Sites; this happens, among other reasons, because site owners often promptly delete the information that the law enforcement deems problematic. In general, the actions of Russian supervisory authorities are becoming less and less transparent (for example, the register now often lists not only the Prosecutor General’s Office, but also an “unknown state agency” as initiators of blocking the same resources), so the analysis of statistical data has become more challenging.

Persecution for Anti-Government Statements

Calls for Extremist and Terrorist Activities

The Supreme Court[6] statistics show an increase in the number of individuals found guilty of incitement to extremist activity (Article 280 CC) as well as of incitement to terrorism, its justification and propaganda (Article 205² CC). The number of people convicted on the main charge under Article 280 CC was 113 persons in 2016, decreased to 90 in 2018, but has only grown since then – there were 255 such offenders in 2021. The number of people convicted on the main charge under Article 205² CC, has grown steadily over ten years and reached 199 people in 2021, and the sentences in several dozen other cases included one of these articles as an additional charge. The Supreme Court has not yet published statistics for 2022, only for the first half of the year. A simple doubling of these figures can only be viewed as a very rough estimate; it shows a slight increase in the number of convicted offenders under both articles. However, on prior occasions, the number of sentences in the second half of the year was often higher than in the first.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has already published its crime statistics for the year, and according to the data, the number of reported extremist and terrorist crimes has increased again. The number of extremist crimes reached 1566 (+48.2% compared to the previous year), of which 493 (+8.4%) were qualified under Article 280 Part 2 CC as public calls to extremism made on the Internet. The Ministry reports 2,233 terrorist crimes (+4.5% compared to 2021), of which 490 (+55.6%) were qualified under Article 205² Part 2 CC as public justification of terrorism committed on the Internet. Probably only a small part of these cases went to trial the same year, so this increase will affect the number of sentences in 2023–2024.

 

Court decisions in such cases are in most cases not published due to a broadly interpreted ban on the publication of the texts of judicial acts issued in cases “affecting the security of the state.” The information available from other sources is generally not sufficient to assess the legitimacy of these decisions. At the same time, in our opinion, not all sentences under Articles 205² and 280 CC should be viewed as affecting state security and, therefore, restricted only because the relevant Criminal Code articles are found in the sections on crimes against the foundations of the constitutional order and the security of the state and society.

At the same time, as much as we criticize the definitions and norms of Russian legislation related to the concepts of “extremism” and “terrorism,” we believe that there are some instances, in which the state can legitimately prosecute public statements under criminal procedure as socially dangerous incitement. In our “Misuse of Anti-Extremism” section, we report only the cases based on acts that either presented no danger to the state and society, or the danger was clearly insufficient to merit criminal prosecution.

 

In principle, an assessment of public danger should be made not only based on the content of the alleged speech, but also on other parameters, including its form, as well as the size and characteristics of the audience, or the likelihood that the public statement will lead to grave consequences. Meanwhile, the courts seem to very rarely take into account the low likelihood of serious consequences resulting from a statement; hence such cases show accusatory bias in legal proceedings. Even the statement itself is often misinterpreted – for example, as deliberate propaganda in a situation where it was more of an emotional remark, including in a protracted dispute. In situations of increased tension in society (as, for example, in 2022), the likelihood that the investigation and the court will overestimate rather than underestimate the social danger of a particular public statement (even if literally corresponding to the composition of a particular criminal article) increases significantly. We are particularly concerned about the growing percentage of prison sentences under these articles although all of them also involve other punishments. The law (not only in Russia) does not establish clear criteria to determine if incarceration is justified, and courts obviously take into account many circumstances when determining punishment. However, SOVA Center believes that imprisonment, even in case of public calls for violence, is appropriate only when the case involves deliberate propaganda of violence (more or less systematic and having at least some chance of implementation) rather than individual emotional outbursts.[7]

 

Below we present only a few criminal cases that we found the most problematic in the past year. These examples largely illustrate the summary above.

On February 3, the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Chita found blogger Alexei Zakruzhny (Lyokha Kochegar), guilty under Article 280 Part 2 (public calls for extremist activity) and Article 212 Part 3 CC (calls for riots). He received a suspended sentence of two years and two months with a probation period of one year and 11 months. In March, the Court of Zabaykalsky Krai reduced his sentence by a month. The case was opened based on a YouTube stream, in which the blogger criticized the pandemic-related ban on visiting cemeteries on Parents’ Saturday and called for “demolishing the cordons” at the entrance to the cemetery grounds to launch a “bloodless revolution.” In our opinion, the blogger’s statement should not be interpreted as a socially dangerous call for violent actions.

On November 11, the Kirovsky District Court of Omsk found local resident Natalia Krivova guilty under Article 280 Part 2 CC (public calls for extremist activities) and issued a suspended sentence of eight months followed by a one-year probation period and a one-year ban on administering websites on the Internet. The case was based on Krivova’s comment in an online Omsk community made in December 2019 under the publication about the public transportation fare increase. Krivova expressed her displeasure with the news by a comment that suggested “going with pitchforks against City Hall” and “pitchfork [Omsk Mayor at the time Oksana] Fadina and others.” We are inclined to believe that Krivova's statement reflected her emotional reaction to the news of the impending increase in public transportation costs and should not be interpreted as a call for actual violent action. Since in this case, the likelihood of the threat being carried out was negligible, the public danger of the statement was also insignificant, and therefore the case didn’t merit criminal prosecution.

A similar case under Article 280 Part 2 CC was initiated in March against Kirill Martyushev[8] from Tyumen. The charges were related to a video message posted by Martyushev on Telegram on February 24, 2022. On that day, he was detained under Article 20.2 Part 5 CAO (participation in a public event held without a permit). Having left the precinct, he recorded a video for his mother, which he posted on the same channel under the title #NETVOINE. Reportedly, in this video, Martyushev expressed his surprise at the political passivity of “those people,” “punching bags,” who look for “malicious” violators at a peaceful anti-war rally. He also added that in his opinion “such people should be immediately sent to the electric chair.” According to investigators, the video contained a public call for violent actions against police officers. We interpret Martyushev's statement as an emotional reaction to the actions of law enforcement officers he viewed as unlawful, in the context of his position on the military actions in Ukraine. His statement had a relatively narrow audience (40 users had read the post by the time the case was opened) and posed no real threat to law enforcement officers. Therefore, we are inclined to believe that Martyushev's act did not represent sufficient public danger to merit criminal prosecution.

On December 23, the 2nd Western District Military Court issued a verdict we find problematic. The court found Daria Polyudova, the founder of the Left Resistance (Levoe soprotivlenie) movement, guilty under Article 282¹ Part 1 (organizing an extremist community) and Article 205² Part 2 CC, and Kirill Kotov, a member of the Left Resistance – under Article 282¹ Part 2 CC. The court sentenced Polyudova, who is currently serving a six-year sentence for justifying terrorism, to nine years in a penal colony, thus adding three years to her previous term. Kotov received a three-year suspended sentence. We regard the charges against Polyudova under Article 205² Part 2 CC as inappropriate. They were based on her publications about people prosecuted for their involvement in the radical Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir banned in Russia as a terrorist organization (see more on this charge below). As for the charges of involvement in the activities of the Left Resistance as an extremist community, they are not entirely unfounded, since the movement's page on VKontakte published calls for the violent overthrow of power. Polyudova herself made such statements and then faced separate charges for them under Article 205² Part 2 CC. However, we have serious doubts about the proportionality of the punishment imposed on her, since the group created by Polyudova was small, enjoyed little popularity, and, as far as we know, was not preparing for any real violent activity. Therefore, it posed no significant public danger. In our opinion, Polyudova's propaganda activities provided no grounds for sentencing her to imprisonment, especially to such a long prison term.

Meanwhile, also in December, the same court, at its visiting session in St. Petersburg dropped the criminal charges against video blogger Yuri Khovansky under Article 205² Part 1 CC (public justification of terrorism) due to the expiry of the limitation period. The case was based on the fact that Khovansky had performed online a song about the 2002 terrorist attack that occurred during the performance of the Nord-Ost musical. We saw no valid reasons for prosecuting the blogger. Khovansky’s performance ridiculed the discourse that had developed around terrorism. It was obviously provocative, so relatives of those killed in the terrorist attack on Dubrovka might find such creative output offensive, and a discussion about the ethics and acceptability of such “dark humor” would be a completely natural social reaction. However, the public danger of such a performance was extremely small, and the criminal article that covers justification of terrorism does not imply penalties for insults or unethical irony.

A new case under Article 205² CC is worth pointing out. In late August – early September, and also in December, a series of searches took place in Kazan at the homes of journalists who collaborated with Idel.Realii and Radio Azatlyk, as well as in the homes of their relatives and other activists. The case under Article 205² Part 2 was initiated based on a video called “Paint and a Booth for the Russian Ambassador to Poland,” published on the “Obyektiv-TV” YouTube channel. Journalists Aisylu Kadyrova and Andrei Grigoryev became suspects in the case. In November Grigoryev was arrested in absentia. The video showed the footage of protests near the Russian embassy in Warsaw accompanied by a commentary, including an incident with Russia's ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreev, that occurred on May 9. On that day, protesters against military operations in Ukraine doused the ambassador with red paint. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case in connection with this incident under Article 360 Part 2 CC (attack against a person enjoying international protection for the purpose of provoking a war or complicating international relations). Since justifying actions punishable under this article constitutes an offense covered under Article 205² CC, the Investigative Committee chose to qualify the distribution of a video about the incident under Article 205² Part 2 CC. In our opinion, Articles 205² and 360 CC have shortcomings that allow the judiciary to interpret as a terrorist activity many acts not associated with violence endangering life and health. These articles do not provide for distinctions based on the gravity of a particular act. Thus, the incident on the video, which is essentially an act of politically motivated hooliganism rather than a serious attempt on the ambassador’s life and health, is qualified as a crime of a terrorist nature (punishable by imprisonment for a term of five to ten years), and its justification – as a justification of terrorism, also subject to severe sanctions. This interpretation, in our opinion, does not correspond to reality. It should also be noted that the commentary on the incident, provided on the video, indeed justifies the protesters’ actions and contains emotional and possibly humiliating remarks regarding the Russian authorities. On the other hand, the video contains no direct calls for violence.

 

For Inciting Hatred

In 2022, we recorded 65 cases filed improperly under Article 20.3.1 CAO for incitement to hatred or enmity or humiliation of human dignity based on belonging to a particular group. The defendants included 64 individuals (one was punished twice, and one – three times) and one legal entity. A fine was imposed in 39 cases, community service in 10 cases, arrest for a period of five to 15 days in 10 cases, three cases were closed and the outcome of the remaining three is unknown.

In the vast majority of cases, inappropriate sanctions targeted internet users for their critical statements made at different points in time against the authorities and law enforcement agencies – some of them were related to coronavirus restrictions, and some – to recent events, including military operations in Ukraine.

In 33 cases, charges under Article 20.3.1 CAO for inciting hatred or humiliation on the basis of belonging to a social group were based on harsh statements about representatives of law enforcement agencies that contained no calls for violence.

For example, in August, the Tsentralny District Court of Khabarovsk fined Alexander Chernichenko ten thousand rubles. According to the court decision, the case was based on the comment “Truly pigs” [Real’no musora, literally “real trash” in Russian] left by Chernichenko on Instagram on October 1, 2021, under the post titled “A Teenager Beaten During Detention at a Rally in Komsomolsk-on-Amur Is Suing the Police.” The expert who examined the comment concluded that it contained a negative assessment of “a group of persons ‘the police’ participating in the ‘beating’ of a ‘teenager’ ‘while being detained at a rally’” (sic!).

Apparently, linguistic experts see the use of such words as “pigs” or “polizei” (alluding to the Nazi police in the times of World War II) to denote the police as a significant marker of negative assessment, in and of itself, and the court, which usually relies on expert opinions, can accordingly interpret it as a sign of incitement to hatred or humiliation. At the very least, we know more than one such case.

Thus, in November, the Zasviyazhsky District Court of Ulyanovsk, having reviewed three cases under Article 20.3.1 CAO against local resident Roman Shilov, sentenced him to 30, 35 and 40 hours of community service. The charges were based on Shilov’s comments on VKontakte made in December 2021 – January 2022 that included the words “pigs” (musora) and “polizei”.

We would like to point out separately the case of sanctions imposed on a legal entity. In early December, a court in Abakan fined the parent company of Khakassian online magazine Novy Fokus 450 thousand rubles under Article 20.3.1 CAO. The case was based on several publications, which the experts involved found to contain signs of humiliating the dignity of law enforcement officers. In our opinion, the materials published in Novy Fokus criticized the work of law enforcement agencies in Russia in general and in Khakassia in particular but contained no aggressive statements.

30 people were charged for making statements that contained strong criticism of the authorities. In early April, the Uray City Court in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug fined local resident Pavel Verbitsky ten thousand rubles. The case was based on a comment Verbitsky posted on February 24 or 25 on “Uray Blacklist,” a local public page on VKontakte. The comment contained an obscene poem that criticized the military special operation in Ukraine in a rude form and called for protests against the government policy. In addition, Verbitsky was charged for two posts on his personal VKontakte page. In one of them he used obscenities to express his wish that the special operation supporters remove themselves from his friend list; in the other one he cursed the Communist Party faction in the State Duma for supporting military operations. According to a linguistic expert opinion, the poem published by Verbitsky contained incitement to violence against members of the United Russia party, since the poem called for “tearing them to shreds.” In our opinion, this statement cannot be regarded as a direct and dangerous call to violence – rather, it is an emotional, but merely allegorical turn of phrase. The expert also found Verbitsky's post to contain “demeaning characterizations, negative emotional assessments and negative attitudes towards the Russian leadership, representatives of the State Duma, members of the United Russia party and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, calls intended as propaganda of inferiority of the Russian government representatives.” The nature of the law enforcement’s objections against Verbitsky’s suggestion that others unfriend him is unclear.

Also in April, the Khimki City Court sentenced environmental activist Alexei Dmitriev to 10 days in jail. The case was based on Dmitriev’s Instagram post – a meme that blamed Adolf Hitler for the shelling of Kyiv in 1941, and Vladimir Putin for doing the same in 2022. According to experts in the case, the post contained linguistic signs of inciting hatred, enmity, and humiliation of Putin's human dignity as a representative of the social group “persons holding public office in the Russian Federation.”

We view legal sanctions for rudely critical statements about government officials as inappropriate. In our opinion, law enforcement officers do not form a vulnerable social group in need of special protection in the form of anti-extremist norms. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly noted that law enforcement officers should be extremely tolerant of criticism unless it involves a real threat of violence. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in its Resolution of June 28, 2011 “On Judicial Practice in Criminal Cases Concerning Crimes of Extremism”[9] also emphasized, citing the ECHR practice, that the permissible limits for criticizing civil servants are wider than the permissible limits for criticizing private individuals.

 

It should be noted that one similar case involving criticism of civil servants was closed in late November – the case of journalist Maria Antyusheva from NGS24.RU, who was fined 20 thousand rubles in October for two Telegram posts. In one of them, Antyusheva scolded “all these Putins and Penzins” (referring to deputy Yelena Penzina from Krasnoyarsk) for not sending their loved ones to participate in the special operation in Ukraine. In her second post, made on October 7, Antyusheva wished an unnamed man a painful death and a million years of suffering in hell for his birthday. The regional court emphasized that the journalist did not call for any illegal actions, and thus her actions were not aimed at inciting hatred or enmity. In addition, the court noted that the case presented no solid evidence that Antyusheva criticized Putin and Penzina specifically in connection with their professional activities in Russia’s government bodies.

 

We also recorded several cases of inappropriate criminal prosecution under Article 282 CC that covers repeated incitement of hatred or incitement of hatred with aggravating circumstances.

It was reported in April that Vyacheslav Chernov from Tashtagol of the Kemerovo Region – an entrepreneur, a blogger, and a former State Duma candidate from Yabloko – faced prosecution based on a video about the investigation into the causes of the explosion at the Listvyazhnaya mine, which he published on Instagram in December 2021. The blogger said that the tragedy occurred due to the “system of total lies” that affects every aspect of life – election results, coronavirus statistics, environmental situation, and safety measures. He also accused the head of the regional Investigative Committee of involvement in the illegal takeover of the mine, compared the prosecutors with “escort girls” and criticized the investigators for their focus on persecuting “rural bloggers.” Earlier, in November 2021, Chernov spent 10 days under arrest under Article 20.3.1 CAO for two Instagram videos. Based on the linguistic expert opinion, the court decided that Chernov had incited hatred against the Russian official representatives and the Tashtagol District Council deputies. We consider the earlier sanctions against him inappropriate as well.

In June, Dmitry Talantov, the president of the Udmurtia Bar Association, was arrested in Izhevsk as a defendant under Article 282 Part 2 Paragraph “b” CC (inciting hatred or hostility using one’s official position) and Paragraphs “a” and “e” of Article 207³ Part 2 CC (dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the armed forces of the Russian Federation motivated by political hatred or enmity). The charges were based on five Facebook posts made by Talantov in March–April 2022. According to the Investigative Committee officers, Talantov, “with prior awareness of the popularity of the Facebook social network and foreseeing socially dangerous consequences in the form of undermining the authority and discrediting the leadership and the armed forces of the Russian Federation, decided to deliberately disseminate false information” and also published information “aimed at the incitement of hatred and enmity towards representatives of the authorities by expressing negative assessments of their activities.”

It became known in July that a criminal case was initiated against Dmitry Antonov, a resident of the Tula Region, under Paragraph “a” of Article 282 Part 2 CC (incitement of hatred committed with the threat of violence) in connection with two VKontakte posts. In one post, Antonov criticized Vladimir Putin using obscene language, calling him a “murderer” and a “criminal,” saying that the end awaited him and “his henchmen and propagandists,” and that “the Putin regime and its supporters are a global threat that will inevitably be destroyed.” The second post contained a similar text about the fate of the “dictators” and the image depicting Putin as Adolf Hitler. Antonov shared screenshots of his posts with journalists, and we found no threats of violence in them.

In September, coordinator of the Mayakovsky poetry readings Artyom Kamardin and readings participants Yegor Shtovba and Nikolai Daineko were arrested in Moscow under the same Paragraph “a” of Article 282 Part 2 CC. The Tverskoy District Court placed them under pre-trial arrest for two months. The criminal case was initiated following the “anti-mobilization” readings of September 25. In the course of the readings, Kamardin, among other statements, characterized the Donbas militia as terrorists and read his 2015 poem “Kill me, Militiaman!” which mentioned children of the militia fighters in a sexual context. After that, Kamardin, along with other reading participants, recited a two-line poem against Novorossiya. Law enforcement agencies have concluded that the statements contained signs of inciting hatred or enmity against volunteer armed groups of the DPR/LPR and called for violence against them and their families. In our opinion, Kamardin's poem can be characterized as provocative, and members of the Donbas militia, their families and supporters could obviously find his words offensive. However, we didn’t find it to contain any incitement to violence.

On July 28, 2022, the 2nd Western District Military Court, at its visiting session in Smolensk, sentenced local opposition blogger Sergei Komandirov to six and a half years in prison, a fine of 30 thousand rubles and loss of the right to post materials on the Internet for five years. This disproportionately harsh (in our opinion) sentence was related to Komandirov’s posts on his public page “We Demand Answers” on VKontakte. The gravest charges were under Article 205² Part 2 CC (public justification of terrorism on the Internet; three counts), for posts, which could, in fact, be interpreted as calls for a violent change of power – even though Komandirov himself was never involved in any violent activity. We view as inappropriate the charges against him under two remaining articles – Article 354¹ CC (see more on it below) and Paragraph “a” Article 282 Part 2 CC. The latter was brought against Komandirov in connection with his post about a protester detained along with her minor daughter. Komandirov negatively characterized law enforcement officers and quoted the words of another blogger about the inevitability of the impending bloodshed. However, Komandirov's post contained no explicit calls for violence. The quote cited in the post can be more appropriately characterized as a pessimistic forecast for the country's social and political future.

For Other Anti-Government Statements

According to our information, in 2022, there were at least 22 cases filed under Article 20.1 Parts 3–5 CAO for disseminating information that expresses disrespect for the state and society in an indecent form on the Internet. There were at least 37 such cases in the preceding year, at least 30 in 2020 and 56 in 2019. In 2022, a fine was imposed 18 times, one case (repeated offense) led to a ten-day arrest, two cases were terminated, and one report was returned to the police. Almost all charges were related to disrespect toward government officials (mainly the president, but also officials, policemen, judges, and society as a whole).

Thus, in March, the Sholokhovsky District Court of the Rostov Region fined Alexei Safonov, chief engineer of the Svetly Ice Arena in the village of Kamenka of the Rostov Region, 50 thousand rubles under Article 20.1 Part 3 CAO; he was also fired from his job. The sanctions were based on his Instagram post made on February 24th. Safonov wrote that everyone was now witnessing horror and disgrace and that the consequences of invading Ukraine would be catastrophic for the Russians; he wished the Ukrainians fortitude. In October, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Novorossiysk fined a 25-year-old Novorossiysk resident the same amount for taking a picture with her pants lowered against the backdrop of the naval cruiser Kutuzov and publishing the photo online. In both cases, the police and the courts found manifestations of clear disrespect for society and the state.

 

We know of only three cases when sanctions were imposed under Article 20.3.2 CAO for calls for violating the territorial integrity of Russia. All three were not accompanied by calls for any violent separatist actions, and, in such cases, we regard sanctions for discussions on territorial issues as inappropriate (we recorded seven such cases in 2021). All three offenders were fined 70 thousand–75 thousand rubles. Oleg Ilchenko, a resident of Kemerovo, was fined for his comments on VKontakte. Reportedly, he wrote: “I suggest that Moscow should separate from Russia; let it only develop itself, so that the poor thing doesn’t have to spend anything on serfs.” Matvei Panikhin was fined for an emotional comment left under a post about forest fires – he offered to transport the president and his “entourage” to Krasnoyarsk, secede from Moscow and “form the Siberian state.” The Vereshchaginsky District Court of Perm Krai fined Sergei Larionov for reposting a newspaper from one of the “Citizens of the USSR” groups interpreting an invitation to participate in the national elections of people's deputies in order to restore the Soviet regime on the Russian territory as a call to violate the territorial integrity of Russia; The Perm Regional Court found this interpretation justified.

In December, in St. Petersburg, the prosecutor's office opened a case under Article 20.3.2 Part 2 CAO (public calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation using the Internet) against rapper Miron Fyodorov (Oxxxymiron) for his song “Oida” released in September 2022. The prosecutor's office also filed a lawsuit to recognize the song as prohibited for distribution in Russia and to restrict access to it via 10 links, including through streaming services. The prosecutors objected to the lines that contained the slogan “Ingria will be free” and to the chorus “Oh, yeah, confiscate our home, oh, yeah, move into it, oh, yeah, choke on it, but we’ll rebuild it.” The slogan mentioned by the rapper belongs to an informal St. Petersburg regionalist movement advocating greater autonomy for St. Petersburg and its region as a single cultural and economic space. This slogan, in and of itself, contains no explicit calls to separate the above-mentioned territories from Russia. In the context of the entire song, including the chorus, it reads more like an expression of confidence that a change in the country’s political regime is inevitable. In our opinion, the author did not cross the line of peaceful political criticism, therefore we consider the prosecutorial actions against him and his work inappropriate.[10]

As far as we know, no charges under Article 280¹ for repeated calls to violate the territorial integrity of Russia were filed in 2022.

 

In the year under review, we recorded five cases filed under Article 20.3.4 CAO that punishes calling for sanctions against Russia, its organizations and citizens (apparently, so far there have been no cases of prosecution under the related criminal article 284² for repeated calls for sanctions).In March, a Moscow court fined Vladislav Arinichev 35 thousand rubles for a video, in which he talked about imposing sanctions. In April, local activist Andrei Balin was fined 30 thousand rubles in Tolyatti; he was charged with publishing a series of ten VKontakte posts, in which he proposed sanctions against Vladimir Putin, his relatives and entourage, and other top officials, as well as economic sanctions against Russia, including an oil and gas embargo.

Also in April, the Gorno-Altaysk City Court issued a fine of three hundred thousand rubles to Listok Publishing House LLC, which publishes a weekly newspaper of the same name. The case was based on the article published in Listok under the heading “Head of the Altai Republic Khorokhordin, Speaker Kokhoev of the State Assembly and Director Koncheva of the Gorny Altai State TV and Radio Will Likely Not Be Able to Visit Civilized Countries.” In this article, Viktor Rau, Listok’s editor-in-chief currently staying abroad, suggested reporting those who supported the special operation on the territory of Ukraine to a certain Telegram bot so that this information is communicated to foreign specialized organizations and ministries of foreign affairs. In June the same court fined Rau personally 120 thousand rubles.

In September, a report under Article 20.3.4 CAO was filed against Sergei Veselov, an activist from Shuya, Ivanovo region, because of a YouTube video in which he talked about the Russian Federation's income from the sale of oil and gas and its impact on the military operation in Ukraine. The city court returned this report to the prosecutor's office, explaining that it failed to indicate “to whom specifically the call for the implementation of restrictive measures is addressed, and or what restrictive measures the call was advocating.” It should be noted that Balin and Veselov are defendants in criminal cases initiated without proper grounds.

For Display of Banned Symbols

In the Supreme Court statistics on the use of administrative articles in the first half of 2022, the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court combined the data under Article 20.3 CAO on propaganda and display of prohibited symbols with data under Article 20.3.1 CAO on inciting hatred. So, while in 2021 the sanctions under Article 20.3 CAO were imposed 3183 times and under Article 20.3.1 – 936 times, the total number of sanctions under these two articles provided by the Supreme Court for the first half of 2022 is 2690. Extrapolating the values of the first six months to the entire year, we will get a 31% increase in the number of sanctions under these two articles compared to 2021.

 

As usual, we know the details of the corresponding administrative cases and can assess their appropriateness only for some of these incidents. We noted more cases filed inappropriately in 2022 than in 2021 – according to our information, at least 120 people were brought to court inappropriately, with three of them punished twice and one person – 23 times (we recorded 55 such cases in 2021).

Courts imposed a fine in 56 cases, and an administrative arrest in 50 cases (here we count the arrests imposed on Vitaly Gotra, who was punished based on 23 separate reports, as one episode, especially since most of the punishments imposed on him were absorbed by the preceding ones; in total, he spent 22 days under arrest); the sanctions were lifted in seven cases, the outcome of two cases is unknown, and we do not know what punishment was imposed in the remaining cases. We view sanctions for the display of symbols with no intent to promote the corresponding ideology as inappropriate.

Opposition activists faced unjustified sanctions more frequently than other groups. 46 cases were opened in Moscow before the municipal elections and targeted acting deputies or people who intended or could intend to run for office. Individuals punished under Article 20.3 CAO lose their passive suffrage rights for a year. Almost all cases were based on the fact that the defendants’ social network posts of previous years included the Smart Voting logo regarded as a symbol of the banned structures of Alexei Navalny. The posts with the symbols of other Navalny organizations, such as the Alexei Navalny Headquarters or the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), were also used as the basis for sanctions. We recorded about a dozen such cases in other regions as well.

As before, public display of Nazi symbols often took place not to promote Nazism, but as a means of visually criticizing the political course of the authorities. Some of these episodes – at least 18 – pertained to the distribution of images, in which the “special operation” symbols were compared with the swastika, or the swastika was superimposed on the image of the president. Among them, the case of Vitaly Gotra from Volgograd stands out. Gotra, a native of the Mykolaiv Region, where his relatives continue to live, affixed to building entrances the stickers that criticized the “special military operation” and contained the swastika symbol. The published rulings indicate that Gotra posted leaflets around the city, which characterized Russian president Vladimir Putin as an “enemy,” a “special military operation” in Ukraine as a “war,” and its participants as “fascists.” The police regarded each posted leaflet as a separate episode and filed charges against Gotra for each of the 23 pieces under two articles CAO at once – Article 20.3 for the swastika and Article 20.3.3 for discrediting the actions of the Russian army. As a result, 46 reports were compiled against Gotra. The Voroshilovsky District Court of Volgograd sentenced him to 23 days of administrative arrest under Article 20.3 CAO and a fine in the total amount of 690 thousand rubles under Article 20.3.3 CAO. Gotra tried to challenge the fine in the regional court but to no avail.

In five cases, citizens were sanctioned for the slogan “Glory to Ukraine” (law enforcement authorities interpreted it as an attribute of banned Ukrainian nationalist organizations) on a poster, in social network comments, and even shouted in public, even though Article 20.3 CAO punishes specifically for disseminating visual symbols. Thus, a resident of Tyumen, Vladimir Fofanov, was placed under arrest for 14 days for playing the anthem of Ukraine on the piano located near the “Shipping Company” office building on Imperatorskaya Embankment, shouting the slogan and then posting the video recording on the Internet.

Nine people were punished in Crimea for performing or listening in public to the folk song “Chervona Kalyna,” first published in 1914. The song was used as an anthem by the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen during the First World War and the Civil War and was later repeatedly performed by popular Ukrainian, Russian and other performers. In 2022, “Chervona Kalyna” became popular once again as a patriotic song following the performance by Andriy Khlyvnyuk.

In September, the Bakhchisaray District Court of Crimea found several Crimean Tatars – the guests and organizers of the wedding, which took place on September 10 in the Arpat banquet hall – guilty under Articles 20.3 and 20.3.3 CAO. At the wedding, the DJ played “Chervona Kalyna,” and the guests began to sing along and dance. The incident was personally condemned by the head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov; the restaurant was subsequently closed, and its owner and the DJ made public apologies. An expert engaged by law enforcement agencies stated that “Chervona Kalyna” was a battle song, that is, an attribute of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose activities are recognized as extremist and banned in Russia. The court ruled that the song’s line “liberate our Ukrainian brothers from Moscow's shackles,” which, according to the expert, was also used by the banned OUN, discredited the use of the armed forces of Russia. Six people faced charges. The DJ and the dancer were placed under arrest for 10 days, the owner of the banquet hall – for 15 days, and the groom's mother – for five days. The bride's mother was fined 40 thousand rubles, and the owner's wife – 50 thousand. Several versions of “Chervona Kalyna” are known, and the most popular of them contain no references to “liberation” from “Moscow’s shackles” or other statements that, depending on the context, can be interpreted as inciting hatred. A short video of dancing in the restaurant circulated on social networks did not contain these lines, and the basis, on which the court decided that this version of the song was the OUN anthem, is unclear.

We also know about cases filed for displaying the symbols of the unregistered party Other Russia of E. V. Limonov, which law enforcement agencies and courts regard as symbols of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), although they are not identical. It is worth reminding that, in our opinion, the decision to recognize the NBP as an extremist organization was not sufficiently justified.[11] While we noted 12 cases filed for displaying the symbols of the Other Russia party in 2021, we recorded only three such cases in 2022.

No instances of inappropriate prosecution were reported under new Article 282⁴ on repeated display or production of prohibited paraphernalia or symbols, which was introduced and already used in 2022.

For Discrediting the Russian Army and Officials

As we pointed out above, we view restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and punishment for disseminating knowingly false information about the actions of Russian military and government agencies abroad and discrediting them as inappropriate. In our opinion, the only reason for imposing these sanctions was the desire of the authorities to limit the dissemination of independent information about events in Ukraine and criticism of the actions of the Russian government and military forces.

 

According to the data of the State Automated System “Pravosudie” collected by the Mediazona portal,[12] as of the second half of December 2022, the total number of cases under Article 20.3.3 CAO submitted to Russian courts for review reached 5518. People faced sanctions for displaying posters, slogans on their clothes, offline and online statements, distributing printed propaganda materials, graffiti on various buildings, etc.

We know of three sentences issued in 2022 under the criminal article on repeated discreditation of the actions of the Russian army and officials abroad.

The first verdict under Article 280³ Part 1 CC (in combination with Article 150 Part 2 CC – involving a minor in committing a crime) was issued by the Nalchik City Court of Kabardino-Balkaria in May. Zaurbek Zhambekov received a two-year suspended sentence with a two-year sentence postponement and a fine of 30 thousand rubles that could be paid in installments. The criminal case against Zhambekov was opened after he asked his teenage daughter to rip a Z-shaped St. George’s ribbon off a car at a city parking lot in late March 2022. Zhambekov had been previously fined under Article 20.3.3 Part 1 CAO for his social network posts.

The second decision under Article 280³ Part 1 was issued in September by the Kanavinsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod, which sentenced local activist and Yabloko party member Andrei Sorochkin to a fine of 200 thousand rubles. The verdict states that Sorochkin was driving around Nizhny Novgorod in a car with an anti-war poster attached to his rear window. He attached another poster with an anti-war statement, in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, to his cabinet at work. Previously, Sorochkin had been repeatedly fined under administrative Article 20.3.3 CAO.

The Verkhotursky District Court of the Sverdlovsk Region issued a similar verdict in October. Father Nikandr (Yevgeny Pinchuk), a hieromonk of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia under the omophorion of Metropolitan Agafangel (ROCOR(A)) was sentenced to a fine of 100 thousand rubles. The case was based on his VKontakte post, which characterized the actions of the Russian army as predatory and stated that the Russian leadership was violating the divine commandments.

We know of at least 39 other people (see Appendix 1) prosecuted under Article 280³ CC in 2022 but not yet sentenced by the end of the year.[13] Most often, criminal prosecution for repeated discreditation of the actions of the Russian authorities and the armed forces was based on texts and videos criticizing the actions of Russian troops in Ukraine posted on social networks, but charges were also filed for distributing leaflets, pacifist actions, defacement of banners that supported the “special operation.” graffiti on monuments (Article 280³ Part 2 was used in case of material damage) and even for a private conversation. Two criminal cases at once were opened against Sergei Veselov from Shuya, who published anti-war videos; two criminal cases under the same charges were also initiated against 77-year-old Tatyana Savinkina from Petrozavodsk for distributing leaflets.

For Spreading Fakes About the “Special Operation” Motivated by Hatred

We oppose criminal prosecution for defamation in principle and believe that defamation allegations should be subject to civil proceedings. It should be noted that the national legislations of various countries differ in their approach to this issue. However, it is not at all clear why disseminating false information about the activities of military personnel or officials requires a separate norm that provides for more severe and clearly disproportionate punishment. It is worth reminding that in General Comment No. 34 to Article 19 (Freedoms of opinion and expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee states that “laws should not provide for more severe penalties solely on the basis of the identity of the person that may have been impugned.”

SOVA Center does not include in its monitoring the prosecution for libel and the dissemination of false information in general, since these issues do not directly fall under anti-extremist regulation. However, if such charges are filed with an aggravating circumstance such as the hate motive, then they fall into our area.[14] At the same time, we believe that the motive of ideological and political hatred, in this case, is used inappropriately. People who publish information about the military operations in Ukraine that differs from the official line obviously tend to ideologically and politically disagree with the course pursued by the authorities – that is, in most of these cases it is a form of political criticism. It is important to note that the manifestation of political or ideological hatred, in and of itself, is not criminalized, and we believe that this motive is appropriately used as an aggravating circumstance only in СС articles on crimes that pose a serious public danger, namely, in articles on the use of violence. As for inciting hatred against such social groups as military personnel or officials, in our opinion, they, unlike ethnic, religious or sexual minorities, the homeless or the disabled, are not vulnerable to the extent of requiring special protection from manifestations of hatred. We generally advocate excluding the vague term “social group” from anti-extremist legislation. At the same time, if the problematic statements contain obvious signs of inciting ethnic hatred and calls for violence, we cannot classify the corresponding cases as inappropriate, but such cases often include charges under other Criminal Code articles, for example, under Article 280 or 205².

Thus, we must include in this report the numerous criminal cases initiated in 2022 under Paragraph “e” of Article 207³ Part 2 CC on the dissemination of “fakes” about the actions of the Russian military and officials abroad, motivated by hatred.

In January 2023, Prosecutor General of Russia Igor Krasnov mentioned 187 reported instances of spreading fakes about the army (i.e., falling under any part of Article 207³ CC after it entered into force in March 2022), of which criminal cases against 67 people charged for 78 separate crimes were sent to the courts. The OVD-Info project collected information on 59 cases under Paragraph “e” of Article 207³ Part 2 CC against 61 Russian citizens not completed by the end of 2022, and we present these cases in a special table in Appendix 2. At the moment, we do not have full information about the statements that formed the basis for charges against many of these people, so we cannot evaluate the appropriateness of their charges. Many of their statements contained no calls for violence; others were charged with such calls, but we had no opportunity to review the relevant texts.

 

We know about nine sentences issued under Paragraph “e” of Article 207³ Part 2 CC in 2022.

See the list of the sentences

1.        Alexei Gorinov, a deputy of the Krasnoselsky Municipal District, was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony under Paragraphs “a,” “b,” and “e” Article 2073 Part 2 CC, that is, also with the use of his official position and by a group of persons based on prior agreement. Gorinov was found guilty of calling the “special operation” in Ukraine a war at the Council of Deputies meeting on March 15 together with the head of the same municipal district, Elena Kotenochkina, who has since left Russia. They also claimed that the Russian government wanted to seize the territory of Ukraine and that children were dying due to the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine. On September 19, the Moscow City Court ruled that the group made no prior agreement and reduced the sentence by one month.

2.       On August 4, the Leninsky District Court of Penza issued a five-year suspended sentence to 55-year-old English teacher Irina Gen; she was also banned from teaching for three years. Answering the question of her students about the reasons they could not attend international competitions in Europe, Gen told them about the war in Ukraine. The teacher's speech was recorded and handed over to law enforcement agencies. Gen told students that the Russian military was “seizing the territories of other states,” started a war in 2014 in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, and planned to overthrow the President of Ukraine. The teacher also said that the Russian military was responsible for the downing of a Malaysian Boeing 777 aircraft.

3.       On August 10, the Taganrog City Court of the Rostov Region issued a five-year suspended sentence with a two-year probationary period and a ban on administering Internet resources for a year to Vitaly Mishin, an invalid from one of the Chechen campaigns. The case was based on the comment allegedly made by Mishin in March under a post about a car rally in support of the Russian military posted in the Rostov-Glavny VKontakte group. In court, his neighbors testified against him. They asserted that he had criticized the social policy of the authorities, “expressed dissatisfaction” with the Russian invasion, and claimed that the Russian armed forces were “committing murders of Ukraine’s civilian population” and, in general, “carrying out the occupation of Ukraine.”

4.       On August 24, the Sochi Central District Court fined Yevgeny Zolotov, an infectious disease doctor, in the amount of three million rubles. The prosecutor appealed the court's decision, but on October 27 the Krasnodar Regional Court upheld the verdict. As follows from the text of the court decision, the case was based on Zolotov’s Facebook posts. He wrote about the losses of military equipment and personnel by the Russian armed forces, criticizing the Russian military for incompetence and using offensive characteristics, and approved the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to the verdict, Zolotov was inspired not only by political but also by ethnic hatred – towards the Chechens, since he claimed that Chechen units were used to prevent Russian soldiers from retreating. We had no opportunity to read the text of this post, so we cannot judge whether it really contained signs of incitement to ethnic hatred. If such incitement was indeed present, then Zolotov, in our opinion, could be held liable for inciting hatred – not criminally, but administratively under Article 20.3.1 CAO.

5.       On October 18, the Elista city court sentenced Altan Ochirov, a Kalmyk activist and ex-employee of the city mayor's office, to three years in a penal colony under Paragraphs “b” and “e” of Article 207³ Part 2 CC. Ochirov was found guilty of disseminating on the Volny Ulus telegram channel a video about Russian soldiers shooting at a car full of retirees. He also shared posts that discussed the sinking of a Russian assault landing ship, the instances of looting, and Russia’s losses in the first days of hostilities in Ukraine. Ochirov denied having anything to do with these publications. Another defendant in the case, activist Erentsen Dolyaev, left Russia. The verdict was appealed by both parties and on December 23 the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kalmykia increased the sentence to five years of imprisonment with an additional ban on holding state and municipal positions for a period of three years.

6.       On December 9, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow sentenced politician Ilya Yashin to eight years and six months in a minimum-security penal colony. His case was based on Yashin's YouTube stream (the corresponding video is called “A Tribunal awaits Putin. Hell Welcomes Zhirinovsky. Khinshtein scribbles denunciations”), where Yashin spoke live about the events in Bucha. He has appealed the verdict.

7.       On December 21, the Odintsovo City Court of the Moscow Region issued a ruling to mandate medical treatment for Olga Trifonova. The prosecutor filed an appeal against the decision with the Moscow Regional Court. According to Trifonova, the case was opened after she posted information on the events in Bucha.

8.      On December 22, the Vologda City Court sentenced stoker Vladimir Rumyantsev to three years in a minimum-security penal colony. Rumyantsev's posts on social networks about civilians killed in Ukraine formed the basis for the criminal prosecution. In addition, he was found guilty of spreading information about the war through a radio transmitter in his apartment. Rumyantsev pleaded not guilty and appealed the verdict.

9.       On December 27, the 2nd Western District Military Court sentenced Irina Bystrova, the head of an art studio from Petrozavodsk, to a fine of 600 thousand rubles to be paid in installments within five years under Paragraph “e” of Article 207³ Part 2 CC in combination with Article 205² Part 2 CC (justification or propaganda of terrorism). As the Sever.Realii portal reported, citing undisclosed sources, “the cases were opened based on two social network posts by Bystrova. One of them contained a photograph of Putin on fire wishing him to burn in hell. The second post stated that the war with Ukraine was unjust and called for stopping it and turning the weapons “against the gang in the Kremlin.” As an illustration, Bystrova published pictures and videos from the Mariupol hospital. We consider Bystrova's verdict inappropriate only in the part that pertains to charges under Article 207³ CC.

For Vandalism Motivated by Hatred

We know of 15 sentences issued in 2022 under Article 214 Part 2 CC (vandalism motivated by political or ideological hatred) against 16 people in connection with their protests against the “special military operation.” As a rule, the offenses involve writing anti-war or pro-Ukrainian slogans in public places or damaging posters dedicated to the special military operation. We include in our monitoring only the cases, in which law enforcement agencies charge defendants with vandalism motivated by ideological or political hatred, although the presence or absence of the hate motive in such cases obviously depends solely on the discretion of specific law enforcement officers, and not on the actual circumstances of a particular incident. We see no need to prosecute people for vandalism motivated by political or ideological hatred. In most cases, these actions represent a form of political criticism. We also believe, as we wrote above, that the motive of political or ideological hatred should be used as an aggravating circumstance only in articles on violent crimes.

Besides, when property damage is minor, in our opinion, cases under Article 214 should be terminated for insignificance. For those cases where the damage is moderate, it might be helpful to introduce an article similar to Article 7.17 CAO covering the destruction or damage of other people's property or to clarify the existing article by adding vandalism that did not cause major damage.

 

We view the 12 sentences listed below against 13 people as inappropriate both based on motive and due to the insignificance of the damage.

See the list of the sentences

1.        On June 29, a magistrate at court precinct No. 143 in Moscow back in June 2022, sentenced Sergei Zvyagin and Alexei Vedeneev to eight months of restriction of freedom for painting anti-war graffiti on a building that belonged to the Moscow United Energy Company (presumably the transformer booth) under the influence of alcohol;

2.       On August 17, In Blagoveshchensk of the Amur Region, Pavel Kambolin was sentenced to 10 months of restraint of liberty for anti-war graffiti he painted on five sites in the city in March; Kambolin also faced sanctions under Article 20.3.3 Part 1, Article 20.3 Part 1 (public display of prohibited symbols) and Article 19.3 (disobedience to the lawful demand of a police officer) CAO. He spent a total of 28 days under arrest and was fined 300 thousand rubles;

3.       On August 17, a magistrate of Moscow Court District No. 205 sentenced a local resident, Oleg Tolmachev, to a year of restraint of liberty, finding him guilty of writing four statements critical of Vladimir Putin on walls;

4.       On August 23, a magistrate in St. Petersburg sentenced Nikita Chirkov to a year of restriction of freedom. In March, Chirkov painted graffiti – a crossed-out letter “Z,” an equal sign, and a swastika in black paint – on the pedestal of the Nikolai Chernyshevsky monument;

5.       On September 14, a magistrate of Court District No. 89 in the Feodosiya Court District of Crimea imposed a year and 21 days of restriction of freedom on Dmitry Stepanchenko for offensive statements about the “special operation” placed on the walls of various urban infrastructure objects using black paint.

6.       On September 27, a magistrate of the Oktyabrsky District in Vladimir sentenced Anton Ganyushkin to eight months of restriction of freedom for anti-war graffiti made in March; Ganyushkin had already reimbursed the municipal service in the amount of approximately 20 thousand rubles for the damage;

7.       On October 13, a magistrate of Court District No. 4 of the Central Court District of Kemerovo sentenced Anastasia Skryleva to a year of restriction of freedom. In protest against the “special operation,” Skryleva doused with paint the banners placed in the city on Victory Day;

8.      On October 24, a magistrate of Court District No. 3 in the Voroshilovsky Court District of Rostov-on-Don sentenced Mikhail Selitsky to one and a half years of restriction of freedom and outpatient psychiatric treatment; according to the version of events offered by the investigation and upheld by the court, Selitsky and several other people painted graffiti on building walls including the statement “Putin is a thief;”

9.       On November 11, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Belgorod sentenced Vasily Devyatov to two years of imprisonment for several anti-war slogans that he wrote on a public transport stop.

10.   On November 17, a magistrate of the Court District No 147 of Pushkinsky District in St. Petersburg sentenced Yegor Kazanets, a citizen of Ukraine, to a fine of 30 thousand rubles (in addition to compensation for the material damage). The case was based on the graffiti “Glory to Ukraine!” left by Kazanets on an apartment building facade on the evening of May 10 in a state of intoxication. He was arrested as early as May 16 and only released after his sentence was pronounced; the time spent under arrest was counted toward his fine. The court found in his actions the motive of ethnic hatred, but we believe that the slogan “Glory to Ukraine!” does not necessarily indicate the presence of the hate motive in a person's actions; the presence of such a motive requires proof[15];

11.     On December 26, a magistrate of Court District No. 1 in the Kirovsky District of Astrakhan sentenced local resident Marcel Nabiullin to two years of restraint of liberty for using a marker to write anti-war statements on an advertising banner, two buildings and two cultural monuments of regional significance in the historic center of the city (commemorative stones in the park named after Heydar Aliyev);

12.    On December 1, a magistrate of Court District No. 164 in the Primorsky District of St. Petersburg sentenced Sergei Vasilyev to a year of restriction of freedom. Using a spray can of blue paint, Vasilyev, left several pieces of graffiti (including “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!”) on playground structures, in an underpass, on the Naval Academy building facade, and the garbage container next to it.

 We have some doubts regarding three more sentences for vandalism, since the damage, although reparable, was indeed inflicted on the monuments. However, we consider the motive of hatred used inappropriately.

See the sentences

1.        On July 7, a magistrate of 208th Court District of the Pushchino Court District of the Moscow Region sentenced Vasily Koretsky to one and a half years of restriction of freedom because in March, motivated by pacifism, he doused a memorial sign to veterans of local wars with red paint;

2.       On October 6, a magistrate of Court District No. 152 of St. Petersburg sentenced Nikolai Vorotnev to a year of restriction of freedom, because Vorotnev, together with an unidentified accomplice, motivated by hatred “for the actions of the Russian Federation’s state authorities in conducting the special military operation,” painted the shield covers of two World War II howitzers located near the artillery museum in the colors of the Ukrainian flag;

3.       On October 25, Dmitry Kozyrev, from Tula, was sentenced to two years of restriction of freedom for writing “War is a requiem for common sense” on the foundation of the Spasskaya Tower in the Tula Kremlin in March 2022.

 We know about 16 similar cases against 22 people opened by law enforcement agencies under Article 214 Part 2 CC in 2022 (see Appendix 3).

For Desecration of Burial Grounds

In October, a criminal case was initiated in St. Petersburg against Irina Tsybaneva under Paragraph “b” of Article 244 Part 2 CC (outrages upon bodies of the deceased and their burial places, committed on the grounds of political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred or enmity). The court placed her under house arrest in October and changed the measure of restraint to a ban on certain activities in November. Tsybaneva left a note on the grave of Vladimir Putin's parents at the Serafimovskoye Cemetery, in which she wished death to their son, “who caused so much pain and grief.” We believe that Tsybaneva's actions were qualified incorrectly. The target of the crime under Article 244 CC is the burial place (monument, grave, area around it). In this case, not only was the burial place not damaged, but Tsybaneva's action itself was clearly not aimed at its desecration. Strictly speaking, the action targeted not the burial place but the political figure of the president and was intended as political criticism. Based on this, we doubt that placing on a grave a note, which only indirectly refers to the people buried in it, can be considered a desecration of the grave. But even if we agree with this interpretation, such “outrage” is not significant enough to merit criminal prosecution under Article 244 CC.

For Hooliganism Motivated by Hatred

We classify as inappropriate the cases under Article 213 Part 2 CC (hooliganism motivated by political or ideological hatred), initiated against participants in public actions which, in our opinion, should not be regarded as a gross violation of public order and disrespect for society. On the contrary, the purpose of such actions is obviously to draw public attention to important social and political issues. Besides, here, as in the cases of vandalism (see above), we consider the motive of ideological or political hatred unnecessary, since these are not violent crimes but a form of socio-political expression.

In 2022, there were three verdicts in such hooliganism cases against four people.

On September 19, the Tsentralny District Court of Chelyabinsk sentenced two anarchists, spouses Dmitry Tsibukovsky and Anastasia Safonova, to a year and nine months in a minimum-security penal colony, as a review of the sentence that was issued a year earlier and overturned. The court took into account the term they had spent in custody, so Safonova was released in December 2022, and Tsibukovsky – in February 2023. The court found them guilty of hooliganism committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy with the use of weapons and motivated by political hatred and enmity (Article 213 Part 2 CC). They were punished for participating in the action held in February 2018. At night, the anarchists placed a banner with the inscription “The FSB is the Main Terrorist” on the fence of the Chelyabinsk FSB Office and also threw a flare over the fence; a video recording of the action was published by the People's Self-Defense VKontakte community. The flare thrown on the snow did not and could hardly be expected to cause damage, and public order likely was not significantly disturbed.

On September 26, the Vasileostrovsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced Igor Maltsev to three years and eight months in a minimum-security penal colony under Article 213 Part 2 CC (hooliganism committed by a group of persons motivated by a political and ideological hatred of military personnel). The case against Maltsev and activist Sofya Semyonova was opened following their performance, in which a camouflage-clad dummy with a bag on its head and the sign “TAKE AWAY” was set on fire on the ice of the Malaya Neva, apparently to protest the special operation in Ukraine. A video of the performance appeared on social networks in early March; the case was opened the very next day. Maltsev’s home was searched, and he was placed in a pre-trial detention center. A measure of restraint in the form of a ban on certain activities was imposed on Semyonova, and she subsequently left Russia.

In October, Oktyabrsky District Court of Izhevsk found Anastasia Ponkina guilty under Paragraph “b” of Article 213 Part 1 CC (hooliganism committed based on ideological enmity) in Izhevsk. The court issued a suspended sentence of two years having excluded the motive of political enmity. The case was initiated in connection with the protest action held on January 23, 2021. The investigation claimed that Ponkina first published on the Internet several calls to come to a rally held without a permit, and then, during the protest, appealed to the attendees to “show who is in charge here,” and led them off the sidewalk and onto the roadway. The indictment noted that this action created a threat of obstructing the normal movement of pedestrians and prevented the movement of four trolleybuses causing damage in the amount of 4,367 rubles.

One new case initiated in 2022 is also worth pointing out. In June, as part of the case opened under Paragraph “b” of Article 213 Part 1searches took place in the homes of Daria Soboleva, a volunteer with the Moscow-based Open Space (Otkrytoe prostranstvo) project that provides assistance to activists, and Irina Putilova, a human rights activist. The search warrants informed that the case had been opened as early as May 1 in connection with an exhibition, planned and displayed in June on the Open Space premises, which included items inscribed with anti-war slogans.

Sanctions against Supporters of Alexei Navalny

Throughout 2022, authorities continued to persecute supporters of Alexei Navalny. As we reported earlier, the structures of Alexei Navalny and his supporters – the Alexei Navalny Headquarters, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), and the Citizens' Rights Defense Fund (FZPG) – were recognized as extremist organizations in June 2021. This did not lead to the expected stream of cases under Article 282² CC for continuing the activities of these organizations. On the other hand, since September 2021, the Investigative Committee has viewed the activities carried out by Navalny’s structures and supporters even before the ban as the activities of an extremist community. Then the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee opened a case under Article 282¹ against Navalny personally and a number of his supporters on the charges of creating, no later than 2014, an extremist community and participating in it. This case was later combined with the cases of money laundering (Paragraph “b” of Article 174 Part 4 CC), creating a non-profit organization whose activities involved inciting citizens to commit unlawful acts (Article 239 Part 2 CC), financing extremism (Article 282³ Part 1 CC), and involving minors in dangerous activities (Paragraphs “a,” and “c” of Article 151² Part 2 CC). Regional activists, who had participated in Navalny's structures, became defendants in cases under Articles 282¹ and 239 CC. In 2022, nine more people joined their ranks — Andrei Fateev (Tomsk), Olga Shkolina and Elizaveta Bychkova[16] (Arkhangelsk), Daniel Kholodny (Moscow), Violetta Grudina (Murmansk), Roman Rubanov (Vladivostok, FBK Director in 2014–2018), Alexei Vorsin (Khabarovsk), Sergei Bespalov (Irkutsk) and Stanislav Kalinichenko (Kemerovo). The total number of defendants in this case thus reached 23 people. In addition, Andrei Zayakin, the co-founder of the Dissernet project, and possibly five more people along with him became defendants in a separate case on financing Navalny's organizations opened only under Article 282³ Part 1 CC.

We believe that there were no legal grounds for recognizing Navalny's organizations as extremist, and therefore attempts to charge him and his supporters with creating these organizations for extremist purposes and with financing extremist activities are inappropriate.

One of the defendants in the case of Navalny and his associates, former coordinator of the Irkutsk headquarters Zakhar Sarapulov, received a one-year suspended sentence on December 27. The Kirovsky District Court of Irkutsk. found him guilty under Article 239 Part 3 CC for participating in NGOs that encourage citizens to refuse their civic duties or commit other illegal acts. After two years of investigation, the court ruled that Sarapulov, as a member of the Navalny headquarters, encouraged citizens to participate in mass events held without permits but dropped the charges under Article 282¹ CC. However, the court took into account, as an aggravating circumstance, the presence of a motive of ideological and political hatred in his actions, as well as hatred against the social group “authorities.”

After the decision to ban Navalny's organizations came into force, activists in different regions of Russia faced sanctions under Article 20.3 CAO for distributing Smart Voting materials with the campaign’s logo, the red exclamation mark, even though this symbol was not the emblem of any recognized extremist organization. 46 cases were opened in Moscow before the municipal elections and targeted acting deputies or individuals who intended or could possibly intend to run for office (those punished under Article 20.3 CAO lose their passive voting right for a year). Almost all the cases were based on the Smart Voting logo found in their social network posts of previous years. Posts with the symbols of other Navalny organizations, such as the FBK were also used as the reason to sanction activists in different regions, and we counted at least ten such cases.

In addition, in 2022, law enforcement agencies continued to charge people under Article 20.29 CAO for distributing a banned video by Navalny’s supporters “Let’s Remind Crooks and Thieves about their Manifesto-2002.” We know of 65 cases (vs. 49 in 2021), with one person fined twice. The perpetrators faced fines from one to three thousand rubles. This video, created in 2011, merely lists a number of unrealized campaign promises made by United Russia in its 2002 draft manifesto and calls to vote for any other party. We consider the ban against this video and sanctions for its distribution inappropriate. Remember that law enforcement agencies are actively monitoring the distribution of this video, since searching for it on social networks makes it easy to carry out “prevention” in the form of administrative sanctions imposed on opposition-minded Internet users. In terms of the number of people punished for reposting this video, the leaders, according to our information, are Altai Krai (22 people fined), the Mari El Republic (ten fined), the Komi Republic (eight fined) and the Ivanovo Region (six fined).

Ban on Organizations of the Opposition

On June 10, the Supreme Court of Tatarstan ruled to liquidate the All-Tatar Public Center (Vsetatarsky Obschestvenny Tsentr, VTOTs) as an extremist organization. The Tatarstan Prosecutor's Office filed a claim for the Center's liquidation back in January 2021. The Ministry of Justice suspended VTOTs' activities in October after the prosecutor's office opened an administrative case under Article 20.3.1 CAO. The claim was based on the address to the State Council of Tatarstan delivered by activist Abdullazyan Zalyalov at the traditional VTOTs rally. Experts concluded that Zalyalov’s address contained a “possible presence of a hostile context” regarding the Russians and contrasted the Russians and the Tatars as “the state-forming people” and “the colonized people.” We believe that the statement should not have been interpreted as incitement to ethnic hatred. However, the Vakhitovsky Court of Kazan fined the Center 250 thousand rubles in December upholding the prosecutorial claims. VTOTs activists had been repeatedly charged in administrative and criminal cases even before that, and in most cases, in our opinion, inappropriately. The combination of these factors allowed the Prosecutor's Office to assert that the VTOTs continued to violate the law despite the warning about the impermissibility of extremist activities received back in 2017. In our opinion, the VTOTs was banned without due justification.

On June 16, the Samara Regional Court recognized the community of the “Citizens of the USSR” as extremist. This group of “citizens of the USSR” is known by many names, including the “Council of Soviet Socialist Districts” and the “Union of Soviet Radiant Clans,” and was previously known as the “Novokuybyshevsk All-Soviet Central Electoral Commission.” We are unable to definitely state whether the ban is legitimate or not. On the one hand, some of the organization’s activities can be characterized as illegal and extremist, specifically, distributing anti-Semitic materials. On the other hand, once its leaders had received the corresponding prosecutorial warnings, the overwhelming majority of court cases against its members related to disseminating the appeal issued by one particular member, “the Soviet deputy” Yuri Slepnyov, in which he urged against interference in the “all-Soviet elections to the councils of people's deputies,” held by the organization. The only law enforcement concern regarding this appeal was the threat contained therein to prosecute all those who dare to oppose the electoral process as traitors to the Motherland under Article 64 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (which provided for punishments up to the death penalty). In and of itself, this threat is hard to take seriously, especially since the Novokuybyshevsk group was never known to be involved in violent actions. The wide distribution of such threats can increase the extent of their public danger, but the question of whether this constitutes a sufficient reason to ban the organization remains open.[17]

On December 6, the St. Petersburg City Court satisfied the City Prosecutor’s claim and recognized the inter-regional movement Vesna as an extremist organization. According to the prosecutorial report, the claims against Vesna were as follows: the movement's activities were aimed at undermining public security and the foundations of Russia's constitutional order; Vesna was creating the “conditions for destabilizing the social and socio-political situation in the country;” and it was forming “public opinion on the need for regime change in the Russian Federation,” including through “holding mass public events in violation of the existing law and using violence against representatives of law enforcement agencies who enforce law and order.” The department claimed that Vesna members committed extremist crimes and offenses, as well as “other unlawful acts that led to violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens causing harm to the individual, society and the state.” It is worth noting that forming public opinion about the need for a regime change in the country is not illegal unless it is associated with calls for violence. We are not aware of any calls for violence by Vesna or any criminal cases initiated under Article 280 CC against individual representatives of the movement. Individual members of the Vesna movement are being prosecuted under Article 239 Part 3 CC (not clear whether they are charged with actions motivated by hatred) and Article 212 Part 1.1 CC (incitement to organize mass riots). However, their guilt was not proven; the case did not even go to court. Thus, in our opinion, the arguments cited by the prosecutor's office in support of the demand to ban the movement looked unconvincing.

State on Guard of Morality

Sanctions for “Rehabilitating Nazism”

In 2022, law enforcement agencies continued to prosecute citizens under Article 354¹ CC on the “rehabilitation of Nazism,” punishing a wide range of acts – denying or approving Nazi crimes, disseminating false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War, desecrating symbols of military glory, insulting veterans, etc. Clearly, against the backdrop of an armed conflict in Ukraine, the issues of historical memory associated with World War II have not lost their political relevance. However, it seems that all the new legislative measures to protect the image of the USSR as a country that defeated fascism are intended as preventative – at least the use of Article 354¹ CC has not become any more widespread. According to the Supreme Court statistics for the first half of 2022, 14 sentences were issued under this article, that is, the situation has not changed much compared to 2021 when 35 sentences were issued. We know of over twenty people who became defendants in 16 new criminal cases on rehabilitating Nazism, inappropriately opened in 2022 – mostly minors involved in vandalism.

We view 20 sentences under Article 354¹ against 23 people as unfounded; thus, the majority of inappropriate criminal sentences we recorded in 2022 were issued under this article.

Some of the verdicts were issued for attempts to upload, on the eve of May 9, photographs of various Third Reich leaders and their well-known collaborators to the Memory Bank website (sometimes under other names) to be displayed during the Immortal Regiment online event. We know of eight such sentences.

More on the sentences

Four people – Andrei Shabanov from Samara, Denis Vorontsov from Volgograd, Vitaly Michurin from Smolensk and Georgy Pesterev from Arkhangelsk – were convicted under Article 354¹ Part 1 CC (public denial of the facts or justification of the crimes established by the Nuremberg Tribunal, dissemination of deliberately false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War or about veterans of the Great Patriotic War). Georgy Gromada and Georgy Vasiliev from St. Petersburg, as well as Alexander Vikulov from Nizhny Novgorod, were found guilty under Article 354¹ Part 3 CC as amended in 2020 (dissemination of information expressing clear disrespect for society about Russia’s days of military glory and memorable dates related to the defense of the Fatherland, as well as desecration of symbols of Russian military glory). Eduard Scherbakov from Tyumen was sentenced under Article 354¹ Part 4 CC, which also punishes disrespect for memorable dates and desecration of symbols of military glory, if these acts are committed using the Internet.

Scherbakov was sentenced to six months in a settlement colony, since he was also convicted under Article 207³ Part 1 CC for spreading fake news about the army. Michurin received a suspended sentence of a year and a half, Gromada – 300 hours of community service, and Vorontsov, Pesterev and Shabanov were fined 300, 250 and 60 thousand rubles respectively. Shabanov's punishment turned out to be the most lenient, despite the fact that he was also found guilty under Article 354¹ Part 3 CC (see below). The court sentenced Vasiliev to 300 hours of community service, and Vikulov to six months of corrective labor with a 10% salary deduction, but both of them were released from punishment due to the expiry of the limitation period for prosecution.

The courts also discontinued 17 similar cases against 17 people due to the expiry of the limitation period – eight in St. Petersburg, two cases per region in the Nizhny Novgorod, Tver and Sverdlovsk regions, and one case per region in Ingushetia, Novosibirsk and Ulyanovsk. Thus, all cases in this category that we recorded as opened in 2022 were eventually closed.

We believe that the qualification of the act of uploading Nazi photos to the Immortal Regiment websites under Article 354¹ CC is incorrect. Unless such actions are accompanied by Nazi propaganda they should not be interpreted as justifying Nazism or disseminating disrespectful information about the Victory Day of May 9 – obviously, the images themselves carry no such data, and the behavior in question is essentially trolling, the motives of which could vary.

 

Nine verdicts were related to posts on social networks.

Six of them were issued for criticism of the Victory Day celebration not intended as a justification of Nazism.

More on the sentences

The above-mentioned Andrei Shabanov from Samara and Smolensk blogger Sergei Komandirov (sentenced to six and a half years of imprisonment under an aggregation of articles) were convicted under Article 354¹ Part 3 CC for such statements. Another Smolensk resident, Alexei Chervyakov sentenced to a year and ten months in a settlement colony under Article 354¹ Part 2 Paragraph “c” and Part 4 CC (dissemination of deliberately false information about veterans of the Great Patriotic War, committed publicly using the Internet, as well as humiliation of the honor and dignity of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War on the Internet).

Mikhail Nalimov, of the organizing committee “For Lenin’s Removal” was found guilty under Article 354¹ Part 4 CC. The court sentenced him to three years of imprisonment but replaced it with compulsory labor for the same period with 10% of his salary withheld by the state. The court also banned Nalimov from administering websites for five years. In early May 2021, the activist posted on a social network several images with Victory Day symbols, specifically a red ribbon and a St. George ribbon, to which he added satanic pentagrams. Nalimov espouses conservative monarchical views and Orthodox fundamentalism; he believes that the power in the Russian Federation is in the hands of Satanists, and the Victory symbols are associated with Satanic cults. In our opinion, Nalimov’s posts were provocative and inspired by conspiracy theories (including those of a xenophobic nature), but we do not believe that he deserved criminal prosecution. In our opinion, neither criticism of the way Victory Day is celebrated, nor alternative interpretations or even intentional distortions of historical facts and cultural traditions should become grounds for a criminal prosecution, unless they are accompanied by calls for violence, hatred and discrimination.

Artyom Antipov received a suspended sentence of six months in St. Petersburg under the same Article 354¹ Part 4 CC. In early May 2021, Antipov published comments in several St. Petersburg VKontakte communities under posts that congratulated veterans of the Great Patriotic War and commemorated Victory Day. The comments included an obscene image with a St. George ribbon and a caption.

Activist Andrei Polyakov from Tambov was fined 250 thousand rubles under Article 354¹ Part 1 CC for posts about the “scorched earth” order and a number of other orders issued by the authorities during the Second World War. According to law enforcement agencies and the court, he equated the actions of the leadership of the USSR, the Red Army and Soviet guerilla fighters with the actions of Hitler and the Nazi troops and thus spread false information about the war-time activities of the USSR. We believe that no legislation should limit the dissemination of any information about the activities of the USSR.

Viktor Bondarev from Novosibirsk was fined 100 thousand rubles under Article 354¹ Part 4 CC (along with Article 128.1 CC on disseminating deliberately false information discrediting the honor and dignity of another person on the internet) and ordered to pay the moral damage compensation to the victims. In his VKontakte posts, Bondarev accused his stepfather, war veteran, of abusing his mother, locking her up in a nursing home, and illegally obtaining an apartment from the state. We believe that the qualification of the defendant’s actions under Article 354¹ Part 4 CC is incorrect and excessive. If Bondarev disseminated unreliable personal information about the veteran, it would have been enough to charge him with libel. In our opinion, Simonov's relatives could have filed a civil lawsuit for the protection of honor and dignity rather than initiate criminal proceedings.

A court issued a two-year suspended sentence under Article 354¹ Part 4 CC to Vadim Kotov, a resident of Krasnogorsk, for publishing a video showing him lighting a cigarette from the Eternal Flame. Kotov shot the video back in 2011 and posted it on his personal VKontakte page in 2021.

Four additional sentences against seven people were handed down for desecration of the Eternal Flame under Article 354¹ Part 4 CC. The Stavropol Regional Court sentenced a teenager to a year in a juvenile correctional colony for urinating on the Eternal Flame in Nevinnomyssk, while two of his friends, Andrei Yenenko and Arsen Lekarev, received two and a half and two years respectively in a settlement colony. Kirill Yefimov from Maloyaroslavets of the Kaluga Region received two years in a settlement colony for a similar act. Three citizens of Turkey – Ercan Kargın, Mustafa Ar and Ibrahim Aytekin – received a year of imprisonment in a settlement colony for wiping their feet on the pedestal of the Eternal Flame in Yoshkar-Ola.

While accepting that “desecration” of monuments is in most cases worthy of public condemnation, we nevertheless believe that criminal prosecution can be justified only for acts that pose a significant danger to the monuments, and in such cases, it is already covered under Article 214 CC (vandalism). Article 354¹ CC provides for a more severe maximum punishment for the desecration of symbols of military glory, which we see as disproportionate to the degree of public danger of such actions. In addition, Russian legislation has yet to define the list of symbols of military glory. As for insulting the memory of non-specified “defenders of the Fatherland,” we believe that criminal prosecution for acts defined in such abstract categories fails to meet the international legal human rights standards.

However, law enforcement agencies last year were particularly zealous in guarding war memorials; chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin more than once took the cases of attacks against them under his special control. We counted 10 such new cases, and six of them involved teenagers of different ages. However, in cases where juvenile delinquents were under the age of 16, there are no prospects for a criminal prosecution, and the demonstrative law enforcement efforts have more of a preventative character.

For example, in November, unidentified persons in Ulan-Ude sprayed black paint on photographs of border guards who took part in the conflict on Damansky Island in 1969. The portraits accompanied by the veterans’ personal stories are located on special stands on the Border Guards Memorial Square. Law enforcement agencies opened a criminal case under Article 354¹ Part 3 CC, and suspicion fell on students of two nearby schools. Traces of saliva were found at the scene, and therefore the investigation decided to take buccal epithelium samples from all male students for DNA analysis. The director of one of the schools contacted parents asking for their consent and causing a mixed reaction among them.

 

Let's review two more high-profile “rehabilitation of Nazism” cases. In April, the media reported on the criminal case under Article 354¹ Part 3 CC opened in connection with the display of the “Big Mother” sculpture by Oleg Kulik. Kulik's work was displayed at the Art-Moscow exhibition in Gostiny Dvor. Writer Zakhar Prilepin and deputy Alexander Khinshtein criticized the sculpture saying that it was a parody of the “Motherland Calls!” monument by Yevgeny Vuchetich. Khinshtein and Yelena Yampolskaya, head of the State Duma Committee on Culture sent a letter to the Prosecutor General's Office asking to check the legality of exhibiting this work. Khinshtein also sent inquiries to the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General's Office regarding a painting from Kulik's “Irresponsible Painting” series. The painting allegedly resembles the “Motherland Calls!” poster by Irakli Toidze. Kulik claims that he created the sculpture in 2018 after a painful separation from his wife. According to the artist, he did not consider his work a parody and implied no references whatsoever to Vuchetich's sculpture. We believe that Kulik's sculpture is an independent artistic statement that contains no propaganda of Nazism and no calls for discrimination or violence. Its demonstration did not encroach on any symbols of Russia's military glory or the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland. Therefore, we see no grounds for opening a criminal case and for restricting Kulik's artistic freedom in general.

In late April, the case under Article 354¹ Part 4 CC was opened against Rovshan Askerov, a journalist and a participant in the “What? Where? When?” (Chto? Gde? Kogda?) intellectual game show. According to the investigation, “not later than April 6, 2022, Askerov published on his page on Facebook deliberately false information insulting and discrediting the memory of Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, a great Russian commander, defender of the Fatherland and Marshal of the Soviet Union.” Indeed, Askerov’s post was disrespectful toward Marshal Zhukov calling him a “murderer in uniform,” a “thief” and an “experienced looter.” However, criminal prosecution for expressing an opinion on certain historical episodes and figures, in our opinion, constitutes an excessive restriction of freedom of expression. Issues related to protecting the honor and dignity of veterans, as well as other persons, should, in our opinion, be considered in civil proceedings.

 

Now let us review the use of the related norms of the CAO.

In January, the Simonovsky District Court of Moscow fined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty three million rubles under Article 13.15 Part 4.1 CAO for abusing the freedom of the press, the wording of the article is identical to the disposition of Article 354¹ Part 1 CC. The claims were related to the article by historian Boris Sokolov “Senseless and merciless. Why Stalin issued Order No. 270.” The charges were prompted by the segment, in which the author mentioned “ciphered telegram No. 4976” sent by Georgy Zhukov, then the Commander of the Leningrad Front, in September 1941 following Stalin’s Order No. 270 issued in August. Sokolov described it as a “draconian order” and a “sinister directive.” The document in question has not survived but was cited in one of the surviving documents as follows: “Explain to all personnel that all the families of those who surrender to the enemy will be shot and, upon their return from captivity, they will also all be shot.” Roskomnadzor stated that Zhukov’s instruction constituted not an order but an “explanation” and thus the information provided by Sokolov was false. Additionally, by calling Zhukov’s actions “draconian” and “sinister’ the author sought to discredit him. Scholarly debates on whether the ciphered telegram ever existed, and whether it should be considered a directive or a free interpretation of the quite inhumane Order No. 270 have nothing to do with the propaganda of Nazism, and pose no danger to society. This is a clear case of ideological censorship to suppress historical research.

 

As far as we know, the new Article 13.48 CAO on equating the actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany and denying the decisive role of the USSR in defeating it was first applied in July. The Prikubansky District Court of Krasnodar fined a local resident Vadim Kiselev a thousand rubles for messages he left in his building chat advising neighbors to read the memoirs of Nikolai Nikulin, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, and discussing the actions of Soviet soldiers against the civilian population of Germany. It was not clear from the excerpt of the message reproduced in the report what exactly the police interpreted as equating the actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany and/or denying the decisive role of the Soviet people in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

In July, activist Kirill Suvorov was placed under arrest for 15 days. The case was based on his Facebook post, which contained a photograph of a “Down with the CPSU” (KPSS) banner with the last two letters replaced by the symbol of the Nazi SS units and a propaganda leaflet by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (recognized in Russia as an extremist organization). In August-September, Moscow politician Leonid Gozman was placed under arrest for 15 days twice for his old posts on social networks in which he drew a parallel between the activities of the NKVD and SMERSH on the one hand and the SS and Gestapo on the other.

Meanwhile, in Nizhnevartovsk, the court twice returned to the police the case under Article 13.48 Part 1 CAO against Alexander Korolyov, a local resident who was charged for sharing on VKontakte an image comparing the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. No other cases under Article 13.48 have been reported, so its application has not yet become systematic.

 

Books that discuss historical events of the mid-20th century continue to attract the attention of the authorities.

In late June, the Leningradsky District Court of Kaliningrad banned the distribution in Russia of the electronic version of Katyn'. Po sledam prestupleniya [Katyn. On the trail of a crime], a book published in 2020 by the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding. The book contains a historical essay on the experience of Polish prisoners of war in POW camps, on the Katyn massacre, fragments of historical documents (including POW’s diaries), an essay on the history of Smolensk, and discussions about modern Russia’s historical memory policies, as well as travel recommendations for visiting places associated with the Katyn tragedy. It is written in a measured tone and acquaints the reader with the opinions of historians, officials and public figures of both Poland and Russia. According to the Kaliningrad Regional Prosecutor's office, the statements contained in the book contradict the Nuremberg Tribunal decision (thus falling under Article 354¹ CC) and contain signs of equating the actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany, as well as denying the decisive role of the Soviet people in Germany’s defeat and the importance of the humanitarian mission of the USSR during the liberation of European countries (which corresponds to the composition of Article 13.48 CAO). The court decision stated that information about the USSR as an aggressor state against Poland contradicts the decision of the Nuremberg Tribunal (although the Nuremberg tribunal never reviewed the activities of the USSR) and equates the actions of the USSR and the Third Reich.

We noted with satisfaction the news that in November, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Murmansk denied an administrative claim from the Murmansk Regional Prosecutor to recognize Agnessa Khaykara’s book Neizvestnaya severnaya istoriya [Unknown Northern History] as extremist material. The decision came into force at the end of December. The case was based on a psychological and linguistic examination of the publication conducted by experts Natalia Kryukova and Alexander Tarasov of the notorious Center for Sociocultural Expertise, who found the book to contain “negative information about the actions of the Russians,” toward the Finnish and Norwegian people and concluded that the book can form in its readers “distorted biased notions” regarding the Russians, the Finns and the Norwegians and contribute to the incitement to hatred. We believe that there were no grounds for recognizing the work as extremist. The historical and ethnographic study by the enthusiast focuses on the fate of Norwegian and Finnish families who moved to the Kola Peninsula in the 19th century and then became victims of the Stalinist terror. Khaykara’s book is based on official documents and stories of the settlers’ descendants including those of her own relatives; ten people in her family suffered in the purges. The book contains no xenophobic or anti-government statements, and its principal message is that historical memory must be preserved.

Sanctions for Insulting the Religious Feelings of Believers

In 2022, the charges under Article 148 Parts 1 CC (insult against the religious feelings of believers) were mostly related to social media posts with various videos and photos taken near places of worship and depicting people in their underwear or various degrees of nudity, some cases also involved atheistic or anticlerical posts and comments. We see no need to prosecute people for publishing “blasphemous” materials unless they contain aggressive appeals against believers. In our opinion, such publications pose no danger to society, and sanctions for their dissemination can be regarded as unjustified interference with freedom of expression. In addition, we are convinced that the concept of “insulting the feelings of believers” introduced into texts of Article 148 Parts 1 and 2 CC has no clear legal meaning at all and should be excluded from the legislation altogether.

We classified five sentences against five people issued under Article 148 Parts 1 CC as inappropriate. Blogger Irina Volkova from St. Petersburg was sentenced in March to 180 hours of community service. Volkova had been photographed squatting with her back to the camera, against the background of St. Isaac's Cathedral, with her skirt pulled up and her underwear visible. In May, Kaluga resident Natalya Maslennikova was fined 25 thousand rubles for a photo she posted on Instagram and Twitter with her skirt lifted in front of the Church of the Transfiguration. Photographer Sergei Kondratiev from St. Petersburg was fined 15 thousand rubles in July for an Instagram video, in which he kissed a man against the backdrop of St. Petersburg's Trinity Church. The video was accompanied by the singing of obscene text stylized after liturgical music. Another St. Petersburg resident, Andrei Kurdov, was sentenced in November to a fine of 80 thousand rubles for an offense committed in 2021 at the age of 17. He and his 15-year-old friend (under the age of criminal responsibility) took a photo of themselves, naked from the waist down, against the background of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and posted it on a social network. On the other hand, in Moscow, the case against Maria Katanova and six other people was dismissed in May due to the reconciliation of the parties; they were charged for their involvement in creating a video, which Katanova then posted online – a photo shoot of a model wearing a balaclava, an open coat, a niqab and underwear against the background of the Moscow Cathedral Mosque.

The verdict issued in Armavir in December is in a group of its own. Gaming blogger Sergei Orlov, who streamed the game PUBG, was found guilty under Article 148 Part 1 CC and under Article 228 Part 1 CC (illegal acquisition and storage of drugs without the purpose of sale). Earlier, Orlov had received a suspended sentence for theft, and now, based on the totality of his verdicts, the court sentenced him to two years in prison. The prosecution against Orlov under Article 148 CC was based on certain statements he made about Islam. We had no opportunity to review these statements, but in general, if Orlov's statements contained no signs of incitement to hatred against Muslims, propaganda of violence or discrimination, he should not have been charged at all, and if such signs were present, he should have been charged under Article 20.3.1 CAO.

We classify as inappropriate six cases under Article 148 Part 1 CC initiated in 2022 against six people. Andrei Tsapkalenko from Khabarovsk faced prosecution for speaking out about the clergy in an interview he gave on the city square during a March 6 rally in support of former governor Sergei Furgal. A 50-year-old resident of Dzhankoy faced charges for posting on the social network some “images and statements offensive to an Orthodox believer,” and a 45-year-old resident of Yeysk of Krasnodar Krai – for posting on his page the images of Orthodox icons “altered by adding details and text that change the original ethical meaning of their subjects.”

Bloggers Polina Morugina (Polina Face)[18] from Moscow and Maria Chistyakova (Mari Govori) from Nizhny Novgorod became the next victims of the fight against “shamelessness.” The former faced charges for posting on Instagram her nude photo in front of the Church of the Intercession in Fili. The latter posted on Twitter on May 2, 2021 (the Orthodox Easter Sunday) a photo depicting her wearing panties decorated with the image of the Virgin. The photo was captioned, “May 2nd is World Tuna Day. Happy Holiday, Everyone! (On May 2, 2021, Easter did indeed coincide with World Tuna Day, which is celebrated on this day every year.)

In addition, it became known in September that the case under Article 148 Part 1 CC was filed against Maxim Yevstropov, one of the creators of the Party of the Dead (Partiya myortvykh), an art project whose participants, since 2017, have been conducting performances on current social and political topics anonymously wearing skull-shaped masks. Starting in February 2022, the Party of the Dead has been organizing various anti-war actions and covering them on its Telegram channel. As part of the investigation, several artists and activists were searched. The case against Yevstropov was based on his post published on Telegram and VKontakte on April 28, 2022. The post described the event organized by the Party of the Dead at the cemetery in celebration of Easter. The post included several photographs of activists in black cloaks and masks holding anti-war posters that included references to Christ and the resurrection, and several similar statements, one of which was critical of Patriarch Kirill.

Fighting School Shootings

On February 2, the Supreme Court of Russia satisfied the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office to recognize the Columbine movement as a terrorist organization. “Columbine” is a common term used to denote massacres in educational institutions.[19] In the course of preparing the case for the hearing, the experts studied the materials distributed by the school shooting fans and found them to contain “linguistic signs of advocating suicidal behavior, the ideology of violence and terrorism and justifying terrorist acts expressed in the form of massacres, shootings, explosions and other actions aimed at mass extermination of people.” Materials promoting mass murder are clearly dangerous and illegal, and law enforcement agencies must combat their distribution. However, the existence of such materials, or even online communities where they are published, gives no reason to believe that Columbine exists as a single organization. In addition, the school-shooting ideology is non-political; school shooters express no demands towards society and government at all. Meanwhile, the federal law “On Countering Terrorism” defines terrorism specifically as “the ideology of violence and the practice of influencing decision-making by public authorities.” In our opinion, banning this dangerous phenomenon as a terrorist organization is not based on the law and, therefore, inappropriate. We fear that the designation of Columbine as a terrorist organization will lead to inappropriate criminal prosecutions under the most severe criminal articles against members of thematic communities on social networks, including teenagers as young as 14. In addition, psychological and educational efforts to identify potential shooters and prevent violence in educational institutions will be significantly hampered, since discussing this dangerous topic with children could subject teachers, social workers, and psychologists to the threat of criminal prosecution for involvement in terrorist activities or failure to report a crime. Meanwhile, thoughtful and active work of psychologists and teachers to address the problems of adolescents is the key to reducing the level of violence among minors.

 

Already in April, we were informed of a criminal case opened in Khabarovsk Krai under Article 205⁵ Part 2 of CC against a 14-year-old student from Amursk. The boy was charged with participating in the activities of a terrorist organization. According to the investigation, he prepared two Molotov cocktails and a knife, invited a fellow student to participate in the attack against the school, and posted information about school shootings on VKontakte.

In December, the case on participation in the banned Columbine movement was brought to court in the Belgorod Region.[20] A high school student from Stary Oskol was charged both under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Paragraph “b” of Article 205 Part 3 CC with the use of Article 30 Part 1 (preparations to commit a terrorist act). According to investigators, the teenager became interested in the ideology of the Columbine movement in September 2021 and planned an attack against his school a year later. His plans fell through since other students reported the teenager's intentions to the head teacher.

If the teenagers from Amursk and Stary Oskol really planned the murder, then their actions certainly posed a great threat and merited criminal prosecution. However, we believe that prosecuting them under Article 205⁵ Part 2 of CC is inappropriate, since they evidently acted independently and not as a member of any organized structure.

However, law enforcement agencies, for some reason, connect domestic “Columbine” followers to Ukrainian ones. In November, a criminal case under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC (organizing the activities of a terrorist organization) and Article 205¹ Part 1.1 CC (recruitment into a terrorist organization) was opened in Krasnoyarsk Krai against a 17-year-old secondary school student from Kryvyi Rih (Ukraine). According to the investigation, the Ukrainian student maintained the Telegram channel “White Rose” (Belaya roza), where he published materials about “Columbine.” In May, the boy allegedly recruited another student from Minusinsk (Krasnoyarsk Krai), who also became involved in the propaganda. Reports about prevented shootings in Kazan and Sochi had previously mentioned “White Rose” as a channel or a username. A secondary school student detained in Kazan insisted that the person calling himself “White Rose” actively contacted him. The username was allegedly used by Yaroslav Ovsyuk, a boy from Kryvyi Rih.

In September, the FSB of the Russian Federation reported that “operational searches and investigative actions were carried out in 46 regions of the Russian Federation against 187 Russian citizens who were members of online communities supporting the ideology of mass murder, administered by the moderators of the Columbine terrorist movement, and the Ukrainian radical group “Maniacs; Murder Cult” (Manyaki; Kul’t Ubiystv, MKU).” However, these actions were more related to the investigation of the activities of MKU, a specifically neo-Nazi group recognized as a terrorist organization in January 2023.[21]

 

The Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow satisfied the prosecutorial claim and recognized the song “The Last Bell” by rapper Oxxxymiron and its videos published on the Internet as extremist materials. Experts engaged by the prosecutor's office to examine the song found it to contain “signs of a public justification of violent acts and an ideology of violence.” The prosecutor's office also argued that the track contained signs of a public justification of terrorism and propaganda of terrorist ideas. We have doubts about the decision to ban this song as extremist material, as well as the general inclination to include school shootings (and the related discussion) in the sphere of anti-extremist and anti-terrorist regulation. The fact that The Last Bell was recognized as extremist gives grounds for imposing sanctions on Fyodorov's fans (including minors) under Article 20.29 CAO. The song's lyrics could potentially fuel the aggressive emotions of a certain segment of the rapper’s teenage audience, but its ban is unlikely to be a significant step in preventing tragedies; on the contrary, it will give this part of the audience another reason to perceive the song as a real call to violence and create additional cause for provocative behavior. In general, we are inclined to believe that making the very discussion of the problem of school shootings illegal precludes a useful conversation on this socially important issue.

Fighting Incitement to Hatred in Literary Texts

The Federal List of Extremist Materials generally demonstrates that an artistic creation (whatever one may think of it from an aesthetic point of view) often turns out to be too complex to be interpreted by law enforcement agencies and courts, particularly within the framework of anti-extremist legislation, whose existing mechanisms produce only a superficial content analysis of a given statement and are not capable at all of analyzing its form. Unfortunately, the courts continue to satisfy unjustified claims to ban literary texts.

Thus, in September, the Dzerzhinsky District Court of Volgograd, once again examined the administrative claim of the prosecutor’s office and recognized the song “Kill the Beggars!” by the Russian punk band Pornofilmy as extremist. The song was originally banned on September 23, 2021, and added to the Federal List of Extremist Materials. The decision was based on expert opinion, which interpreted the song as a call for violence against the poor. In mid-February, the Volgograd Regional Court overturned the ban and sent the case back for a new trial. Kill the Beggars! is a creatively reworked Russian-language version of the song Kill the Poor by the American punk band Dead Kennedys. Its principal message is a sharp denunciation of the rich and those in power for oppressing the poor. It is absolutely impossible to imagine a situation in which the audience could take the song literally as a direct call to eliminate the poor inhabitants of Russia by dropping a neutron bomb. The song is obviously satirical and criticizes the state policy, which the authors consider antisocial; and the calls for violent actions were included in the text to enhance the effect of the message. Experts involved in the new trial recognized the song as a satire, but the court did not take their arguments into account.

However, we also recorded some examples to the contrary. In Volgograd, the court refused to uphold the prosecutorial claim and recognize the song “About Islam” as extremist, and in October, the Volgograd Regional Court upheld this decision. The track in question created by an unknown artist for many years has been erroneously attributed to the Russian rap collective Kasta. We welcome the decisions of both courts. “About Islam” contains no aggressive appeals – the performers only declare that Islam is the only true religion and say the Shahada in Arabic and Russian. We believe that asserting the superiority of one’s own religious beliefs over others should not be considered a sign of extremism. Adherents of almost any religious creed are convinced of the highest truth of their own teachings.

Once a material is added to the Federal List, fines under Article 20.29 CAO can be imposed for its distribution. In 2022, we saw new cases opened for posting the banned song “Kill the Cosmonauts” by the band Ensemble of Christ the Savior and the Crude Mother Earth on social networks. We consider this ban inappropriate – the song is obviously satirical and ridicules obscurantism and primitive religiosity. Its calls to punish cosmonauts for “climbing to the sky” cannot be taken seriously. Nevertheless, according to our data, at least four social media users were fined because of this track in 2022, three of them in the Kemerovo Region and one in the Omsk Region.

Persecution against Religious Associations

We know at least 86 inappropriate verdicts against 186 individuals that were issued in 2022 on charges of involvement in organized extremist and terrorist activities (vs. 95 such verdicts against 164 people in the preceding year).[22] 85 of those cases against 185 individuals (compared to 91 against 154 people in 2021) pertained to religious organizations.

Jehovah’s Witnesses

In 2022, the authorities continued their persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses whose registered Russian communities were banned in 2017 as extremist organizations. Meanwhile, on June 7, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a ruling in the case of Taganrog LRO and Others v. Russia. The judgment considered 20 complaints by Jehovah's Witnesses filed between 2010 and 2019; the total number of applicants was 1,444, including 1,014 individuals and 430 legal entities. The ECHR considered only a few of the applicants' complaints in detail, indicating that the rest did not require special consideration because the findings would apply to all similar situations. The applicants complained about the liquidation of several of their local organizations, the subsequent recognition of the Jehovah's Witnesses Administrative Center in Russia along with 395 local communities as extremist organizations, the bans against their religious literature and the official website, and criminal prosecution and administrative sanctions against believers. The ECHR found that by prosecuting Jehovah's Witnesses Russia was violating several articles of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention) – Article 9 on freedom of conscience, Article 10 on freedom of expression, Article 11 on freedom of assembly and association, as well as Article 5 (the right to liberty and security of person) and Article 1 (protection of property) of the Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention. The Strasbourg court demanded that Russia compensate for the damage caused to the believers, release the imprisoned Jehovah's Witnesses and discontinue the criminal cases against them.Even though Russia has refused to execute ECHR decisions made after March 15, the Convention itself prescribes a different course of action. According to Article 58 Part 2, denunciation does not release a party from its obligations with respect to any action violating such obligations and committed by that party before the effective denunciation date.

According to the data provided by the Jehovah's Witnesses, 674 believers in 72 regions of the country faced criminal prosecution from 2017 through 2022. In 2022, new criminal cases for continuing the activities of banned organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses and their financing (Articles 282² and282³ CC) were opened against at least 77 believers.[23] There were at least 213 such cases in 2019, at least 146 in 2020, and at least 142 in 2021. Thus, we can say that the scope of persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in 2022 dropped almost in half compared to the preceding year.

In 2022, the courts continued to issue verdicts in numerous criminal cases opened earlier. At least 62 verdicts against 124 Jehovah’s Witnesses were issued under Article 282² as well as Article 282³, which was an additional charge for 19 believers and the only charge for three of them. Three sentences against six believers were overturned, leaving 59 sentences against 118 believers in force. A year earlier, we counted 68 verdicts against 105 believers.

In 2022, the convicted offenders included 103 men and 21 women; four women were sentenced to imprisonment. The group also included elderly people, as well as people with serious illnesses. For example, 64-year-old Anatoly Gorbunov from Krasnoyarsk was sentenced to six years of imprisonment, and 53-year-old Andrei Vlasov, who has Group II disability and needs daily assistance – to seven years. Only four sentences against four believers were significantly reduced on appeal; their real prison terms were commuted to suspended sentences of the same length. The proceedings against two Jehovah's Witnesses – Yen Sen Li from Vyazemsky in Khabarovsk Krai and Yuri Geraskov from Kirov – were closed last year due to the death of the defendants.

Three more cases were returned to prosecutors and one more was dismissed for the lack of corpus delicti.

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In January, the Pechora Сity Court of the Komi Republic returned to prosecutors the 2020 case under Article 282² CC against nine believers from Pechora – Gennady Polyakevich, Gennady Skutelets, Nikolai Anufriev, Eduard Merinkov, Pavel Ogorodov, Viktor Schannikov, Alexander Vorontsov, Alexander Prilepsky and Sergei Zabora. The court pointed out that the indictment contained no information about the defendants’ extremist actions or plans to continue the activities of a banned religious organization, but only about the intention to profess their religion, and cited the decision of the Supreme Court of October 28, 2021.[24]

In the same Komi Republic, in June, the Syktyvkar City Court returned to the prosecutor's office a case initiated in 2021 against Alexander Kruglyakov, Alexander Ketov, Andrei Kharlamov and Sergei Ushakhin, charged under Article 282² Part 1, and Lidia Nekrasova, charged under Part 2 of the same article. The court concluded that the indictment did not reflect any specific illegal actions of the defendants and provided no evidence of their criminal intent and extremist motives.

In April, the Norilsk City Court of Krasnoyarsk Krai returned to the prosecutors the case opened in 2019 under Article 282^2, Part 1 CC against Alexander Polozov and Stepan Shevelev (who became the second defendant in 2021). According to the court, the fact that the defendants professed the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses was not a crime.

In May, the Investigation Department for the Arkhangelsk Region and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug of the Investigative Committee of Russia closed the case of Vladimir Teterin, Andrei Maksimovich and Sergei Potylitsyn from Severodvinsk, initiated in 2019, due to the lack of corpus delicti.

Meanwhile, we only recorded one acquittal in the entire year. On June 29, the Porkhov District Court of the Pskov Region acquitted Alexei Khabarov during his retrial (a year earlier, he received a suspended sentence under Article 282^2, Part 2 CC, but it was overturned by the regional court). However, the prosecutor's office appealed this decision, and already on November 3, the Pskov Regional Court overturned it and sent the case for review by a different first-instance court.

Several other earlier acquittals were overturned in 2022.

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The Primorsky Regional Court on April 8 overturned the acquittal of Dmitry Barmakin by the Pervorechensky District Court of Vladivostok; his case was returned to the court of first instance for a new trial. Barmakin, charged under Article 282² Part 1 CC, was the first believer acquitted in 2021 based on the above-mentioned Supreme Court decision of October 28 of the same year.

On December 15, the Supreme Court of Russia overturned the acquittal of Konstantin Bazhenov, his wife Snezhana Bazhenova and Vera Zolotova from Kamchatka and forwarded it to the appellate instance for a new trial. In 2020, believers received two-year suspended sentences under Article 282² Part 2 CC, and the regional court approved the verdict. However, in November 2021, the Ninth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction sent the case back for a new trial based on the said Supreme Court decision. Then, on January 18, 2022, the Kamchatka Regional Court acquitted the Bazhenovs and Zolotova, and six months later this decision was approved by the cassation instance. Now that decision has been reversed.

In 2022, several earlier verdicts against Jehovah's Witnesses were overturned by higher courts.

The sentence against Alexander Pryanikov, Venera Dulova and Darya Dulova from Karpinsk of the Sverdlovsk Region was overturned, but they are all defendants in another criminal case, which is currently under review in the City Court. The cases of Andrei Sazonov from Urai (Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra), Elena Menchikova from Karachay-Cherkessia, and Natalya Kriger and Svetlana Monis from Birobidzhan were sent for retrial. As a result of the review, Monis once again received a suspended sentence.

Below is the data on all sentences against Jehovah's Witnesses known to us that were issued in 2022, without information on additional types of punishment.

49 believers were sentenced to imprisonment in a minimum-security penal colony in 22 separate verdicts; the majority faced over six years of imprisonment (one of these sentences against four people was later overturned).

1.     On January 17, the Pavlovsky District Court of the Krasnodar Krai sentenced Maxim Beltikov to two years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

2.     On January 20, the Seversk City Court of the Tomsk Region sentenced Yevgeny Korotun to seven years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

3.     On January 25, the Trusovsky District Court of Astrakhan sentenced Anna Safronova to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 2 CC and Article 282³ Part 1CC;

4.     On February 2, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnoyarsk sentenced Anatoly Gorbunov to six years in prison under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

5.     On March 28, the Khostinsky District Court of Sochi sentenced Tatyana Velizhanina to a year and five months of imprisonment, and Vladimir Deshko – to a year and four months under Parts 1.1 and 2 of Article 282² CC, that is, not only for participating in an extremist organization but also for encouraging, recruiting or otherwise involving a person in its activities; both were released from the execution of punishment, as the court took into account the time they had spent in custody and under house arrest during the investigation; two other believers received suspended sentences (see below);

6.     On April 18, the Neftekumsky District Court sentenced Konstantin Samsonov to seven and a half years of imprisonment (taking his pre-trial detention into account, he will spend six years in a penal colony); two more defendants in the case were sentenced to fines and released from their payment due to their stay in pre-trial detention (see below);

7.     On May 23, the Tsentralny District Court of Prokopyevsk, the Kemerovo Region, sentenced Andrei Vlasov to seven years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

8.     On May 24, the Pavlovsky District Court of Krasnodar Krai sentenced Lyudmila Schekoldina to four years and one month in a minimum-security penal colony under Parts 1.1 and 2 of Article 282² CC;

9.     On June 6, the Tsentralny District Court of Chita sentenced Vladimir Yermolaev and Alexander Putintsev to six and a half years, and Igor Mamalimov to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC; another believer received a six-year suspended sentence (see below);

10. On June 27, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnoyarsk sentenced Yevgeny Zinich to six years in a minimum-security penal colony under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

11. On August 25, the Leninsky District Court of Saransk sentenced Vladimir Atryakhin to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC, Georgy and Natalya Nikulin – to four years and two months under Parts 1.1 and 2 of Article 282² CC, and Denis Antonov, Alexander Korolyov and Alexander Shevchuk – to two years in prison under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

12. On September 20, the Gukovo City Court of the Rostov Region sentenced Vladimir Popov, Alexei Dyadkin, Yevgeny Razumov and Nikita Moiseev to seven years, and Alexei Gorely and Oleg Shidlovsky to six and a half years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

13. On October 6, the Nakhimovsky District Court of Sevastopol sentenced Yevgeny Zhukov, Vladimir Sakada, and Vladimir Maladyka to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

14. On October 25, the Tyndinsky District Court of the Amur Region sentenced Vladimir Bukin, Valery Slashchev and Sergei Yuferov to six and a half years of imprisonment under Parts 1 and 1.1 of Article 282² CC; Mikhail Burkov – to six years and two months of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC; on December 27, the Amur Regional Court overturned the verdict and sent the case back for retrial to the court of first instance, releasing the defendants on bail;

15. On November 7, the Rubtsovsk City Court of Altai Krai sentenced Andrei Danielyan to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

16. On November 14, the Georgievsk City Court of Stavropol Krai sentenced Viktor Zimovsky to six years and two months of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC and Article 282³ Part 1 CC, one more unnamed believer was sentenced to compulsory labor, the other received a suspended sentence;

17. On November 15, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Novosibirsk sentenced Alexander Seredkin to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

18. On December 1, the Armyansk City Court in the Republic of Crimea sentenced Alexander Dubovenko and Alexander Litvinyuk to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

19. On December 19, the Birobidzhansky District Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region sentenced Valery Kriger and Sergei Shulyarenko to seven years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 and Article 282³ Part 1 CC, Alam Aliev – to six and a half years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC, Dmitry Zagulin – to three and a half years of imprisonment under Article 282³ Part 1 CC;

20. On December 21, the Blagoveshchensk City Court sentenced Sergei Afanasyev to six and a half years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 and Article 282³ Part 1 CC; four other believers were found guilty only under Article 282² Part 1 CC: Anton Olshevsky, Adam Svarichevsky and Sergei Yermilov received six years and three months of imprisonment, and Sergei Kardakov – six years and four months;

21. On December 28, the Zeysky District Court of the Amur Region sentenced Leonid Druzhinin and Yevgeny Bitusov to six and a half years in a minimum-security penal colony under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

22. On December 28, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnoyarsk sentenced Alexander Filatov to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC.

One believer was sentenced to compulsory labor. 

One believer was sentenced to compulsory labor: on November 14, the Georgievsk City Court of Stavropol Krai sentenced Anatoly Gezik to compulsory labor for four years and two months under Article 2822 Parts 1.1 and 2 CC and Article 156 CC (improper fulfillment of parental responsibilities for raising a minor); Gezik's wife, Irina, received a suspended sentence (see below), and another believer received a real prison term (see above).

63 persons received suspended sentences in 38 separate verdicts (two verdicts against two believers were later overturned).

1.     On January 19, the Seversk City Court of the Tomsk Region sentenced Alexei Yershov to three years of imprisonment, having found him guilty under Article 282² Part 2 CC, but in April, the regional court replaced his real prison term with a suspended sentence;

2.     On January 20, the Seversk City Court sentenced Andrei Kolesnichenko to four years in prison under Article 282² Part 2 CC, but in June the regional court replaced the real prison term with a suspended sentence;

3.     On January 20, the Snezhinsk City Court of the Chelyabinsk Region sentenced seventy-year-old Lyudmila Salikova to six years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC. On January 11, 2023, the Seventh Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction in Chelyabinsk overturned the verdict and sent the case back for a new trial to the appellate instance;

4.     On January 31, the Nevelsk City Court of the Sakhalin Region sentenced Yevgeny Yelin and Sergei Kulakov to six and a half years of imprisonment under Article 282² Part 1 CC, Sergei's wife Tatyana Kulakov, as well as Vyacheslav Ivanov and Alexander Kozlitin, received two-year suspended sentences under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

5.     On January 31, Pozharsky District Court of Primorsky Krai in the village of Luchegorsk issued a six-year suspended sentence to Sergei Sergeev and Yuri Belosludtsev under Article 282² Parts 1.1 and 2 CC;

6.     On February 3, the Ussuriysk District Court of the Primorsky Krai issued a three-year suspended sentence to Sergei Melnikov under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

7.     On February 16, the Kerch City Court of Crimea issued a two-year suspended sentence to Artem Shabliy under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

8.     On March 28, the Khostinsky District Court of Sochi issued a two-year suspended sentence to Yury Loginsky and Yury Moskalyov under Article 282² Parts 1.1 and 2 CC; two other believers were given real terms of imprisonment but released from serving their sentences (see above);

9.     On April 4, the Abakan City Court of Khakassia issued a suspended sentence of two and a half years to Matryona Spiriadi and Alexander Vergunov under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

10. On April 14, the Seversk City Court of the Tomsk Region issued a three-year suspended sentence to Sergei Belousov under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

11. On April 15, the Ussuriysky District Court of Primorsky Krai issued a suspended sentence of two and a half years to Vitaly Ilyinykh under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

12. On April 25, the Birobidzhansky District Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region issued a suspended sentence of five and a half and five years respectively to spouses Oleg Postnikov and Agnessa Postnikova under Article 282² Parts 1.1 and 2 CC;

13. On April 26, the Seversk City Court of the Tomsk Region sentenced Andrei Ledyaikin to two years and two months in a minimum-security penal colony under Article 282² Part 2 CC, but in July the regional court replaced his real prison term with a suspended sentence;

14. On May 6, the Sovetsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod issued a six-year suspended sentence to Galina Abrosimova under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

15. On May 12, the Leninsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod issued a three-year suspended sentence to Kirill Yevstigneev under Article 282³ Part 1 CC;

16. On May 26, the Metallurgichesky District Court of Chelyabinsk issued a six-year suspended sentence to Pavel Popov from Yemanzhelinsk under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

17. On May 30, the Moskovsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod issued a six-year suspended sentence to Maxim Zavrazhnov under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

18. On June 1, the Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok issued a six-year suspended sentence to Valentin Osadchuk under Article 282² Part 1 CC; Nadezhda Anoikina, Nina Purge, Raisa Usanova, Lyubov Galaktionova and Nailya Kogay received two-year suspended sentences under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

19. On June 3, the Pervomaisky District Court of Kirov issued the following suspended sentences under Article 282² Part 1 CC and Article 282³ Part 1 CC: six and a half years to Polish citizen Andrzej Onischuk, six years and three months to Andrei Suvorkov and Yevgeny Suvorkov, six years and two months to Maxim Khalturin, three years and three months to Vladimir Korobeynikov, and to two and a half years to Vladimir Vasilyev;

20. On June 6, the Tsentralny District Court of Chita issued a six-year suspended sentence to Sergei Kirilyuk under Article 282² Part 1 CC; three additional believers received real prison terms (see above);

21. On June 6, the Vyazemsky District Court of Khabarovsk Krai issued a five-year suspended sentence to Yegor Baranov under Article 282² Parts 1.1 and 2 CC;

22. On August 5, the Zelenogorsk City Court of Krasnoyarsk Krai issued a two-year suspended sentence to Alexander Kabanov under Article 322² CC (fictitious registration at the place of residence or stay) and Article 282² Part 2 CC; On December 27, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court overturned the verdict and returned the case to the prosecutor's office due to significant violations of the norms of criminal procedure;

23. On August 8, the Golovinsky District Court of Moscow issued a six-year suspended sentence to Alexander Serebryakov and Yuri Temirbulatov under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

24. On September 5, the Vologda City Court sentenced Nikolai Stepanov to four years in a minimum-security penal colony, while Yury Baranov received a four-year suspended sentence under Article 282² Part 1 CC. However, the regional court replaced Stepanov's real prison term with a suspended sentence in November;

25. On September 20, the Partizansk City Court in Primorsky Krai issued a suspended sentence of two years and three months to 53-year-old Liya Maltseva under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

26. On September 26, the Temryuksky District Court of Krasnodar Krai issued a two-year suspended sentence to Vladimir Vidiker under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

27. On October 10, the Solnechny District Court of Khabarovsk Krai issued a five-year suspended sentence to Boris Yagovitov under Article 282² Parts 1.1. and 2 CC;

28. On October 10, the Kezhemsky District Court of Krasnoyarsk Krai issued a three-year suspended sentence to Ildar Urazbakhtin under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

29. On October 20, the Lesozavodsky District Court of Primorsky Krai issued a six-year suspended sentence to Galina Kobeleva under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

30. On October 31, the Birobidzhansky District Court issued a suspended sentence of two and a half years to Svetlana Monis under Article 282² Part 2 CC; the court imposed the same punishment on her in February 2021, but this decision was overturned, and the case was sent for retrial;

31. On November 7, the Nikolsky District Court of the Penza Region issued a two-year suspended sentence to Viktor Shayapov under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

32. On November 8, the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky City Court issued four-year suspended sentences to the spouses Dmitry Semyonov and Nadezhda Semyonova under Article 282² Part 1.1 CC;

33. On November 14, the Georgievsk City Court of Stavropol Krai issued a suspended sentence of four years and two months to Irina Gezik under Article 282² Parts 1.1. and 2 CC, as well as Article 156 CC; the court sentenced her husband to compulsory labor, and another believer – to a real prison term (see above);

34. On November 21, the Asha City Court of the Chelyabinsk Region issued a six-year suspended sentence to Andrei Perminov under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

35. On November 25, the Kirovsky District Court of Makhachkala issued suspended sentences of six and a half years to Arsen Abdullaev, Marat Abdulgalimov and Anton Dergalev under Article 282² Part 1 and Article 282³ Part 1, and a suspended sentence of six years to Maria Karpova under Article 282² Part 1 CC;

36. On December 7, the Metallurgichesky District Court of Chelyabinsk issued a two-year suspended sentence to Vadim Gizatulin under Article 282² Part 2 CC;

37. On December 22, the Alatyrsky District Court of the Chuvash Republic issued six-year suspended sentences to Mikhail Yermakov and Andrei Martynov under Article 282² Part 1 CC; two women defendants in the same case were fined (see below);

38. On December 22, the Vyazemsky District Court of Khabarovsk Krai issued a suspended sentence of two years and five months to Sergei Kuznetsov under Article 282² Part 2 CC.

11 people were sentenced to fines in seven separate verdicts.

1.        On February 10, the Kalininsky District Court of Cheboksary fined Vladimir Dutkin 500 thousand rubles, and Valery Yakovlev and Vladimir Chesnokov – 400 thousand rubles under Article 282² Part 1CC;

2.       On April 18, the Neftekumsky District Court of Stavropol Krai sentenced Alexander Akopov and Shamil Sultanov to fines of 500 thousand rubles under Article 282² Part 1CC and Article 282³ Part 1 CC but annulled these fines taking into account the defendants’ lengthy pre-trial detention; another person involved in the case was sentenced to imprisonment (see above);

3.       On April 21, the Kondopoga City Court in Karelia fined Alexei Smelov 400 thousand rubles under Article 282² Part 1CC;

4.       On July 26, the Snezhinsk City Court of the Chelyabinsk Region fined Ilya Olenin 500 thousand rubles under Article 282² Part 1CC;

5.       On September 22, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Murmansk fined Vitaly Omelchenko 580 thousand rubles under Article 282² Part 1CC;

6.       On November 17, the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Krasnoyarsk fined Igor Gusev 600 thousand rubles under Article 282² Part 1CC;

7.       On December 22, the Alatyrsky District Court of the Chuvash Republic fined Nina Martynova and Zoya Pavlova 350 thousand rubles each under Article 282² Parts 1.1 and 2; two other defendants in the same case received suspended sentences (see above).

Hizb ut-Tahrir

Throughout 2022, Muslims continued to face prosecution under Criminal Code articles on organizing the activities of a terrorist organization, participation in it, and involvement of others in it, based on their involvement in the activities of the Islamic religious party Hizb ut-Tahrir. This party is banned in Russia as a terrorist organization, despite the absence of any information about its involvement in terrorist activities.[25] Defendants in such criminal cases are often charged with planning a violent seizure of power in Russia only because Hizb ut-Tahrir preaches the idea of establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate – law enforcement officers and courts do not ask for evidence of any actual plans. We also note that the majority of those persecuted in recent years are from Crimea. Obviously, charges of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir make a convenient tool for suppressing the oppositional activity of the peninsula’s Crimean Tatar population.

We know of 20 verdicts issued in 2022. 52 people, including 30 Crimean Tatars, were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment ranging from 11 to 19 years in a maximum-security penal colony (often with part of the term to be served in prison) and faced various additional restrictions (not listed here). For comparison, a year earlier we recorded eight verdicts against 23 people, 11 of whom were from Crimea, and two years earlier – 12 verdicts against 31 people. Thus, the number of individuals convicted for involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir in 2022 exceeds the numbers reported in the preceding years, likely due to the sentencing of 25 defendants in the so-called second Simferopol Hizb ut-Tahrir case. In general, we can talk about the continuing trend toward decreasing prosecution for involvement in the party. In 2022, at least 28 Muslims were detained in different regions of Russia on charges of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, but only for nine of them, we have reliable information that they were arrested as defendants. 

See the sentences issued in 2022

1.        On February 11, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Vadim Bektemirov and Zekirya Muratov from Crimea to 11 and 11.5 years of imprisonment respectively under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC (participating in the activities of a terrorist organization); Muratov was found guilty under Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC (preparation for forcible seizure of power);

2.       On March 10, the Southern District Military Court sentenced the first five of the 25 defendants in the second Simferopol Hizb ut-Tahrir case. Riza Izetov and Remzi Bekirov received 19 years of imprisonment, Shaban Umerov – 18 years, and Raim Aivazov – 17 years with the first five to be served in prison under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC. The court sentenced Farkhod Bazarov under the same articles to 15 years of incarceration with the first four years and 10 months to be served in prison;

3.       On March 18, the Southern District Military Court sentenced the next five defendants in the same case. Eskender Suleymanov and Asan Yanikov received 15 years of imprisonment, and Akim Bekirov, Seitveli Seitabdiev and Rustem Seitkhalilov – 14 years of imprisonment with the first five years to be served in prison under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC;

4.       On March 22, the Southern District Military Court ruled in the case of two residents of Crimea, sentencing Timur Yalkabov to 17 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC (organizing the activities of a terrorist organization) and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC and Lenur Seidametov – to 13 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC; both will have to serve the first four years of their term in prison;

5.       On April 19, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Crimean Tatar activist Emil Ziyadinov to 17 years of imprisonment with the first four years to be served in prison under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC;

6.       On May 12, the Southern District Military Court passed a verdict on the third five-person group of defendants in the second Simferopol Hizb ut-Tahrir case, finding them guilty under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC. Tofik Abdulgaziev, Vladlen Abdulkadyrov, Izzet Abdullaev and Medzhit Abdurakhmanov were sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment each, and Bilyal Adilov – to 14 years with the first five to be served in prison;

7.       On May 18, the Central District Military Court sentenced Marsel Gimaliev from Kazan to 17 years in a maximum-security penal colony under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 205¹ Part 1 CC (financing of terrorist activities, in the version in effect prior to December 29, 2017);

8.      On July 8, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Ernest Ibragimov and Oleg Fyodorov, Crimea residents from Bakhchisaray to 13 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC; both have to spend the first three and a half years of their term in prison;

9.       On July 8, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Ismet Ibragimov, also a Crimean Tatar, to 19 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC, with the first five years to be served in prison and the rest in a maximum-security penal colony,

10.   On July 15, the 1st Eastern District Military Court issued a verdict against two residents of the Kemerovo Region, sentencing Sanatzhon Khaldarov to 13 years and Mukhamadzhon Niyazov – to 11 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC with the first four years to be served in prison;

11.     On July 19, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Crimean Tatar activist Azamat Eyupov to 17 years of imprisonment with the first three years to be served in prison under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC;

12.    On August 4, the Central District Military Court ruled in the case of ten Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters detained in Moscow, Tyumen and Kazan. Marat Saibatalov and Alim Timkanov, charged under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC, were sentenced to 17 and 18 years of imprisonment, respectively with the first six years to be served in prison; the other defendants in the case were sentenced under Part 2 of the same article to various terms of imprisonment with the first five years to be served in prison: 14 years for Ruslan Bariev, 12 years for Damir Abdrafikov and Ruslan Fomin, 13 years for Aidar Tashbulatov and Shakhboz Makhmudov, and 11 years for Farrukh Makhkamov, Rafis Idrisov and Turatbek Osmonkulov;

13.    On August 8, the Central District Military Court sentenced foreign citizen Ravshan Saliev, a resident of the Penza Region, to 11 years of imprisonment with the first three years to be served in prison under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 205¹ Part 1.1 CC (incitement to terrorist activity);

14.    On September 9, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Yashar Shikhametov, a Crimean Tatar, under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC to 11 years of imprisonment with the first four years to be served in prison;

15.    On September 13, the Central District Military Court issued a verdict in the case of four Kazan residents and sentenced Vyacheslav Vankov to 18 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Parts 1 and 2 CC and Article 205¹ Part 1.1 CC (financing of terrorism), Rail Abdrakhmanov – to 17 years under the same articles, Lenar Mukhamadeev – to 12 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 205¹ Part 1 CC (incitement to terrorist activity), Ilsur Galeev – to 11 years under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC; they must serve the first four years of their respective sentences in prison;

16.    On October 19, the Central District Military Court sentenced Farit Sharifullin from Kazan to 18 years of imprisonment in a maximum-security penal colony under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC and Article 205¹ Part 1 CC (in the version in effect before December 29, 2017) and Article 327 Part 4 CC (forgery);

17.    On November 24, the Southern District Military Court issued its verdict for the fourth five-defendant group in the second Simferopol Hizb ut-Tahrir case. Enver Ametov and Yashar Muedinov were sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment, and Ruslan Suleymanov, Rustem Sheikhaliev and Osman Arifmemetov – to 14 years of imprisonment under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC with the first four years of their sentences to be served in prison;

18.   On November 30, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Crimean Tatar activist Marlen Mustafaev from Belogorsk under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC to 17 years of imprisonment with the first three years to be served in prison;

19.    On December 9, the Central District Military Court sentenced Ruslan Ilyasov, a resident of Kazan, to 19 years of imprisonment with the first five years to be served in prison, and the remaining term in a maximum-security penal colony under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC and Article 205¹ Part 1.1;

20. On December 29, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Crimean Tatar activist Ernes Ametov to 11 years in a maximum-security penal colony under Article 205⁵ Part 2 CC and Article 278 with Article 30 Part 1 CC. Ametov was arrested back in 2017; a court acquitted him in 2020, but in early 2022, the Military Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal.

 

Two additional verdicts of questionable appropriateness were issued under Article 205² CC on charges of promoting or justifying the ideology of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Since we believe that there were no grounds for recognizing the party as a terrorist organization, the party propaganda, in our opinion, does not fall under the article on propaganda of terrorism. On July 21, Southern District Military Court found Crimean Tatar activist Server Bariev guilty under Article 205² Part 2 CC and sentenced him to a fine of 360 thousand rubles with a ban on administering websites on the Internet for a year and a half. Bariev had published on VKontakte a material from Al Raya, an Arabic-language newspaper sponsored by Hizb ut-Tahrir. In November, the 2nd Western District Military Court sentenced an inmate of a penal colony in the Pskov Region to two years, six months and five days in a maximum-security penal colony under Article 205² Part 2 CC for spreading the ideas of Hizb ut-Tahrir among other inmates.

Bakhrom Khamroev, a human rights activist and a member of the liquidated Memorial Human Rights Center, was arrested in February under Article 205² Part 2 CC. According to the investigators, Khamroev promoted the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir in several Facebook posts, in which he shared two materials in the Uzbek language related to the party, and a video of the Arabic-language channel Al-Waqiyah TV dubbed in Uzbek. It was reported in October that Khamroev was also charged under Article 205⁵ Part 1 CC. According to his lawyer, the charge is related to the fact that Khamroev had provided assistance to those accused of terrorism and collected their case materials. Bakhrom Khamroev has been defending the rights of migrants from Central Asia and Russian Muslims for many years, in particular, the ones charged in Hizb ut-Tahrir participation cases, while categorically denying his own involvement with the party.

We also note that in the above-mentioned verdict of the 2nd Western District Military Court, activist Daria Polyudova also included a charge under Article 205² Part 2 CC for publications about people prosecuted for their involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. We consider these charges inappropriate. In one of her publications, Polyudova directly expressed her disagreement with the Hizb ut-Tahrir ideology; her doubts regarding the validity of prosecuting its alleged supporters under anti-terrorist legislation do not constitute evidence that the author justifies such activities.

Tablighi Jamaat

In 2022, at least six sentences against 15 people were issued under Article 282² CC for continuing the activities of Tablighi Jamaat, a religious movement recognized as extremist in Russia (vs. 13 against 20 people a year earlier). Tablighi Jamaat was banned in Russia in 2009, and we view this ban as unfounded. This movement is engaged in propaganda of fundamentalist Islam but has never been implicated in any calls for violence; therefore, we consider the sanctions against its supporters inappropriate.

See the sentences issued in 2022

1.    On January 13, the Kirovsky District Court of Omsk found Sultan Dyusekenov guilty under Article 282² Part 1 CC, and Abdimomun Mamytov and Murat Baltabaev – under Article 282² Part 2 CC. All three were sentenced to fines in the amount of 20 to 90 thousand rubles, since the court applied Article 64 Part 1 CC, which allows imposing a punishment below the minimum due to an insignificant public danger of a crime or for assistance in solving it. However, on March 30, the Omsk Regional Court increased the severity of the sentence, upholding the prosecutor's appeal. Dyusekenov was sentenced to two years in a minimum-security penal colony with the loss of the right to engage in activities related to participation in public organizations for three years and with restriction of freedom for one and a half years. Mamytov and Baltabaev received suspended sentences of one and a half years each under Article 282² Part 2 CC with a three-year ban on participation in the work of public organizations and eight months of restriction of freedom as additional punishments. According to investigators, Dyusekenov was the head of a Tablighi Jamaat “cell” that functioned from July 2020 to April 2021 and recruited Mamytov and Baltabaev to participate in it, entrusting them with the responsibility of promoting Tablighi Jamaat among the local population. The defendants were detained in the spring of 2021 as part of a group of 11 people; four other detainees later became witnesses in the case, and the rest – citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan – were deported from Russia by court decisions.

2.    We learned in March that a court in Saratov sentenced a 51-year-old local resident to two years in a penal colony followed by eight months of restriction of freedom under Article 282² Part 2 CC having found him guilty of conducting regular meetings to promote the Tablighi Jamaat ideology among residents of the Saratov Region and participating in such meetings.

3.    In August, it was reported that another resident of the Saratov Region was found guilty under the same article. He was sentenced to two years behind bars followed by restriction of freedom for six months. His charges were based on participating in the movement's propaganda activities for two days in October 2019.

4.    On April 12, the Rubtsovsk City Court of Altai Krai issued a verdict under Article 282² Parts 1.1 and 2 CC to a follower of Tablighi Jamaat, who had been sentenced in Bashkortostan to four years and seven months of imprisonment and subsequently transferred to a colony in Altai Krai, where he started holding secret religious meetings and thus involving other prisoners in the movement’s activities The inmate in question is probably Ramiz Faskhiev, a founder of the Miras Cathedral Mosque in the city of Dyurtyuli in Bashkortostan sentenced by the Chekmagushevsky District Court of Bashkortostan in June 2017 to four years and seven months in a penal colony under Article 282² Part 1 CC on charges of organizing the activities of the Tablighi Jamaat cell. In August, the verdict of the Rubtsovsk City Court was reviewed by the Altai Regional Court and changed. Taking the previous verdict into account, the court sentenced the defendant to five years and 20 days in prison to be served in a maximum-security penal colony.

5.    In August, the sources that cited the FSB reported that the Nikolaevsky District Court of the Ulyanovsk Region issued suspended sentences to Myasut Rafikov, Saubyan Salkin, Aisyu Shabanov and Mansur Sadykov ranging from two years and eight months to six years and two months. According to the FSB, Rafikov had “held secret meetings and coordinated preaching trips to mosques in other regions of Russia to indoctrinate and involve Muslims in extremist activities.” Rafikov was convicted under Article 282² Part 1 CC; the others were found guilty under Article 282² Part 2 CC.

6.   On September 12, the Sovetsky District Court of Volgograd issued a verdict under Article 282² Part 2 CC to five local residents, finding them guilty of involvement in the Tablighi Jamaat and issuing two-year suspended sentences with two-year probationary periods to all defendants. The court decided that starting in July 2016 and until their detention in July 2020, the defendants held meetings to study the ideology of Tablighi Jamaat. On November 11, the Volgograd Regional Court considered the appeal of the prosecutor's office against this decision and toughened the punishment for three of the offenders. For Amanat Lukpanov, Batr Urazov and Gilman Nitaliev the suspended sentence was replaced with real imprisonment in a minimum-security colony. The sentence of two other defendants, Aslan Vakuev and Alexander Kolesnikov, remained unchanged. All five offenders were additionally sentenced to 10 months of restriction of freedom.

We received no information about a single new case of involvement in Tablighi Jamaat initiated in 2022.

Said Nursi Readers

In 2008, following the unjustified bans against the books of moderate Islamic Turkish theologian Said Nursi, the Supreme Court of Russia decided to recognize an alleged organization of his followers, Nurcular, as extremist for promoting the superiority of Islam over other religions. In fact, Russian Muslims studying Nursi’s legacy do not form a single organization, but this did not prevent the Supreme Court from banning the non-existent Nurcular. As a result, the authorities can prosecute Muslims for reading and discussing Nursi’s books under Article 282² for involvement in an extremist organization and give them real prison terms. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2018 that by banning Nursi’s books the Russian courts had violated Article 10 of the European Convention which guarantees freedom of expression. However, the persecution of Muslims who study Nursi’s books continues.

In Dagestan, at least six people became defendants in 2022 in criminal cases under Article 282² CC for holding meetings to study the works of Nursi. The meetings were interpreted as continuing the activities of Nurcular; the new cases were reported in January, March, April, May and July. The defendants were primarily from the town of Izberbash. It should be noted that similar reports repeatedly came from Dagestan in 2021, but the Izberbash City Court of Dagestan terminated seven criminal cases under Article 282² Part 2 CC.

In late November, the Fifth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction reviewed a complaint against the sentence issued to Ilgar Aliev. In 2018, he was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment under Parts 1 and 1.1 of Article 282² CC for organizing a Nurcular “cell” and involving others in it. The cassation court removed the charge against Aliev under Part 1.1 and reduced his sentence by two years. When the defendant was released, he found out that he had lost his Russian citizenship, apparently, based on the norm, in force since 2017, according to which a court verdict under certain anti-extremist and anti-terrorist articles (including under Article 282² CC), once in force, can serve as a basis for overturning the decision to grant Russian citizenship. Aliev was to be deported to Azerbaijan, but we have no information on whether the deportation ever took place.

We are aware of two cases on creating Nurcular “cells” that went to court in 2022. In June, the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court received the case of three residents of Naberezhnye Chelny, Khunar Agaev, Aidar Sageev and Amrakh Akhmedov, charged under Parts 1 and 2 of Article 282² CC and arrested in November 2021. In September, the Kuzminsky District Court of Moscow began the proceedings in the case of Yevgeny Tarasov, Mukazhan Ksyupov, Parviz Zeynalov and Urdash Abdullaev, charged under Article 282² Part 1 CC, as well as Ilmir Abdullin and Nikolai Nesterovich, charged under Part 2 of the same article. They were all arrested in Moscow and the Moscow Region in October 2021.

In the second half of June, the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court decided to leave without consideration the claim of the republican prosecutor's office to recognize as extremist 47 titles of books by Nursi, multi-volume collections of his work, and books about his teachings. In total, the group includes 163 different publications seized from eight residents of Naberezhnye Chelny, including Nakia Sharifullina, who was convicted in 2021 under Article 282² Part 1 CC. In April 2021, the same court in a different composition ruled that the publications were extremist. The experts who examined the books claimed that they represented “ideological sources of the religious extremist association Nurcular,” or that they included such sources and their “fragments.” The experts also pointed out that a number of publications were identical to materials previously recognized as extremist in Russia. However, in July of the same year, the Supreme Court of Tatarstan reversed the decision to ban the publications, noting, among other considerations, that the lower court had considered the issue of banning books in the Ottoman (old Turkish) language in the absence of their translation, that is, without a chance to become familiar with their content. At the new hearing, the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court sent the books for a new expert examination. However, according to the lawyer who took part in the trial, the decision to leave the claim without consideration was made precisely because the court did not know the language of the majority of books.

Alla-Ayat

In 2022, several criminal cases were initiated against followers of the Alla-Ayat religious groups (a.k.a Elle Ayat, other spellings are also possible depending on the way the Kazakh name is rendered into Russian). The Alla-Ayat doctrine was founded in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Kazakhstan by Farkhat Abdullaev. Its adherents are sun worshipers, who advocate a cure for all illnesses through the use of special tea, saying the “life formula,” contemplating the sun, as well as repeatedly reading and applying to sore spots the issues of the Zvezda Selennoy magazine published by the doctrine’s founders. Several issues of this magazine were recognized as extremist materials in 2012, since the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court found them to promote the idea of the superiority of the Alla-Ayat followers over other people. The Novosibirsk Regional Court in 2013 recognized the local Alla-Ayat group as an extremist organization on the grounds that its members read banned issues of Zvezda Selennoy and banned its activities as posing danger to citizens’ health, since adherents of the doctrine refused medical care in favor of the Alla-Ayat methods. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation reviewed this decision and left it in force only in the part that banned the group’s activities in the region. However, in 2019, the Allya-Ayat religious group in the Samara Region was recognized as extremist specifically for the alleged distribution of the banned publications. As a result of this decision, Alla-Ayat adherents from different regions of Russia face prosecution for continuing the activities of an extremist organization even though their relation to the Samara group is unclear.

For example, in January it became known that, back in October 2021, a criminal case was initiated in Kiselyovsk of the Kemerovo Region against a 67-year-old local resident, Lyubov Tkachyova under Article 282² Part 2 CC. The case was based on the fact that Tkachyova practiced the Alla-Ayat routines – read the “life formula” and drank the special tea, sometimes with like-minded people.

In March 2022, in Barnaul, a criminal case under the same Article 282² Part 2 CC was opened against unnamed defendants. According to law enforcement officers, the “Ayat Center” operated in the city in 2020–2021, and on its premises, the adherents of the teaching continued the activities of the banned Samara group.

In July, the case on Article 282² Parts 1 and 2 CC was initiated in Novosibirsk, against four local residents including 81-year-old Irina Klimova. According to investigators, they coordinated the activities of the group or participated in it organizing treatment of illnesses and distributing prohibited literature.

Administrative Sanctions for Distribution of Religious Literature

The number of reported charges for the distribution of religious literature that we consider inappropriately prohibited is quite small. 16 people in different regions of Russia were fined under Article 20.29 CAO. However, it should be borne in mind that we have information only about a small fraction (slightly over two hundred) of decisions to impose sanctions under this article in 2022, while, in the first half of the year alone, the courts imposed such sanctions 507 times.

In 14 cases, people faced charges for Islamic materials, and five of them based on the distribution of the Fortress of a Muslim, a collection of daily prayers (in Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia and the Orenburg Region). In three cases (in Karachay-Cherkessia) the incriminating book was The Future Belongs to Islam, by Sayyid Qutb. These are peaceful materials that appear in similar administrative cases year after year. Other popular publications included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials also triggered sanctions: 40 Hadith of Imam An-Nawawi, Muhtasar Ilmihal. A Concise Manual of Basic Islamic Teachings, TheIslamic Doctrine by Ahmet Saim Kilavuz, and others. It should be noted that in most cases, no mass distribution of materials implied by Article 20.29 CAO ever took place. Muslims were held liable for possession of one or two copies of prohibited literature.

In addition, in March, a resident of Cherkessk was fined for having the book The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived (an illustrated Jehovah's Witnesses brochure about the life of Jesus Christ, banned in 2016) out for distribution near the Press House building.

While citizens faced fines in the amounts of one to three thousand rubles, a legal entity, Knigoboom Booksellers, was fined half a million rubles in August by the Nevsky District Court of St. Petersburg, when Scientology literature included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials was found on its premises.

A Bit of Statistics

Let us first turn to the general criminal law enforcement statistics collected by the SOVA Center in 2022.

We know of 10 verdicts against 22 people issued for violent crimes with the hate motive, and 20 verdicts against 24 people for attacks against material objects with the same motive (in both cases, we include the verdict into our count only if it takes the hate motive into account),[26]247 verdicts against 260 people for public statements, 130 verdicts against 264 people for involvement in banned organizations.[27] Several sentences fell into more than one category. Providing these figures, we traditionally clarify that our data differs significantly from the numbers published semiannually in the statistical reports compiled by the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. We only know of the sentences that are reported by the press, law enforcement agencies, courts, convicted offenders themselves or their lawyers, and so on, and such information does not always become public.

Of the 247 known verdicts against 260 individuals issued for public speech, we view 16 verdicts against 21 persons as appropriate and intended to stop manifestations of xenophobia; another 44 verdicts against 50 people, in our opinion, are likely appropriate and issued in connection with the propaganda of another kind of violence, against government officials. We regard 39 verdicts against 40 people as inappropriate. We are not sure about the legitimacy of four verdicts against four people, and we do not know (or have insufficient information on) the charges that led to 147 sentences against 148 people. Several sentences fell into more than one category.

Of the 130 verdicts against 264 people issued for involvement in banned organizations, we recognize 14 sentences against 40 people as appropriate. We are unable to evaluate 14 verdicts against 19 people due to the absence or vagueness of the information. 86 verdicts against 186 people we consider inappropriate, and 16 sentences against 19 people, strictly speaking, cannot be classified as countering extremism – they were issued on charges of involvement in clearly terrorist organizations (such as the Islamic State) or in AUE, which is a subcultural phenomenon classified as an extremist organization on unclear grounds.

Our statistics on misuse of anti-extremist legislation include a number of attacks against material objects inconsistently categorized by law enforcement agencies. On the one hand, some cases under Article 214 Part 2 CC, taking into account the motive of hatred, are related to protest graffiti and other actions that caused only minor damage. On the other hand, there were cases under Parts 3–4 of Article 354¹ CC on the desecration of military monuments, in which people were prosecuted for inflicting minor damage motivated by hooliganism or political sentiment, but not for the purpose of promoting Nazism (court decisions on this article do not take the motive of hatred into account). In our opinion, the defendants in both categories pursue the purpose not so much to inflict serious damage to material objects but to attract the attention of society. Thus, in our opinion, the relevant court decisions may be viewed as issued for public statements. In our general statistics below, we include these 16 verdicts against 20 people in our totals for public speech. On the same grounds, three sentences against four people for hooliganism motivated by hatred, which were issued for protest actions, belong to the same category.

 

Now let’s shift our focus to the information on the group of criminal sentences mentioned above, which we view as inappropriate. If we take into account the problematic decisions made under both anti-terrorist and anti-extremist articles, the total for 2022 comes to 141 verdicts against 246 people (compared to 115 verdicts against 185 people in 2021), with 55 verdicts against 60 people (compared to 20 verdicts against 21 people in 2021) associated with public speech. 86 verdicts against 186 people (vs. 95 verdicts against 164 people in 2021) were associated with involvement in the activities of banned organizations (religious in all cases, except one).

Out of this total, 119 inappropriate verdicts against 192 people were issued under anti-extremist criminal articles (vs. 105 sentences against 160 people in 2021). 53 verdicts against 58 people were issued for “extremist” speech (including attacks on material objects and hooliganism motivated by hatred, as explained above; we recorded 18 such sentences against 19 people in 2021), and 66 verdicts against 134 people for involvement in the activities of extremist organizations (compared to 87 verdicts against 141 individuals in 2021).

 

Below in this chapter, we present the results of tallying the court decisions and newly initiated criminal cases that we view as either completely inappropriate or highly problematic, grouping them according to articles of the Criminal Code (the cases themselves are discussed in the relevant chapters of the report).

Sorting the verdicts under anti-extremist and related articles that pertain to public statements in descending order by the number of wrongfully convicted, we get the following picture.

Article 354¹ CC on the rehabilitation of Nazism (denial or approval of Nazi crimes, dissemination of false information about the activities of the USSR during the war years, desecration of symbols of military glory, insulting veterans, etc.) tops our list. According to our information, 20 verdicts were issued under it in 2022 against 23 people from different regions of the country without proper grounds (vs. 12 against 12 people a year earlier). 11 of them were sentenced to imprisonment, three to suspended sentences, five to fines, one to compulsory labor, one to community service, and one was released from punishment. Proceedings in 17 similar cases against 17 defendants were discontinued due to the expiry of the limitation period. However, at least 16 new cases against at least 23 people, at least nine of whom were minors, were opened on dubious grounds in 2022.

Article 214 on vandalism motivated by ideological and/or political hatred takes the second place with 12 sentences issued in 2022 against 13 activists in different regions of Russia (one of them was later overturned, but this took place already in 2023). 12 defendants were sentenced to restriction of freedom and one to a fine. A year earlier, we recorded one such verdict against three individuals. We doubt the validity of three verdicts issued in 2022. We also recorded 16 new similar cases filed without proper justification against 22 people in different regions. We also know of one criminal case that was inappropriately initiated under Paragraph “b” of Article 244 Part 2 CC (desecration of the grave, motivated by hatred).

The third place belongs to Part 2 Paragraph “e” of the new Article 207³ on spreading fakes about the actions of the Russian armed forces motivated by hatred. We recorded nine such sentences against nine residents of Moscow, Karelia, Kalmykia, and Krasnodar Krai, as well as the Vologda Region, the Moscow Region, the Penza Region, and the Rostov Region. Four people were sentenced to real prison terms of up to eight and a half years, two received suspended sentences, two were fined (one of them in the amount of three million rubles), and one person was referred for compulsory treatment. We noted another 59 cases against 61 people in different regions of Russia that did not come to trial in 2022. So, this article showed the greatest “potential.”

We know of five sentences against five people under Article 148 Part 1 CC, which punishes for “insulting the feelings of believers,” (there were five verdicts against six people in 2021) – three in St. Petersburg and one each in Kaluga and Krasnodar Krai; one case in Moscow was terminated due to the reconciliation of the parties. For one person, the suspended sentence imposed under a different charge was toughened and replaced with a real prison term, another person was sentenced to community service, and the three remaining ones were fined. Six new criminal cases were initiated against residents of Crimea, Krasnodar Krai, Khabarovsk Krai, the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

According to our information, last year the courts managed to pass only three sentences under Article 280³ CC on the repeated discreditation of the actions of the Russian army and officials abroad, against residents of Kabardino-Balkaria, Nizhny Novgorod and the Sverdlovsk Region. A suspended sentence was imposed in the first case and only the fines in the other two. Our data indicates that 39 people faced charges under this article in 2022 as part of 38 new criminal cases, so this legal norm, like the “fakes about the army,” unfortunately might come to play a more prominent role.

According to our data, three inappropriate verdicts (vs. one in 2021) against four activists from Chelyabinsk, St. Petersburg, and Udmurtia were, issued under Article 213 CC on hooliganism, taking into account the motive of social and political hatred. Three of them were sentenced to imprisonment, and one person received a suspended sentence. One new case was inappropriately opened in Moscow.

We recorded two inappropriate sentences under Article 280 CC on incitement to extremism in 2022 – against a blogger from Chita (we wrote about his sentence as the only inappropriate case of 2021, but then it was overturned and sent for retrial) and a resident of Omsk; both received suspended sentences. We classify one new case initiated under Article 280 CC against an activist from Tyumen as inappropriate.

Our statistics included only one wrongful sentence under Article 282 CC in 2022 (none at all in 2021), which punishes for incitement of hatred, repeated or with aggravating circumstances. A blogger from Smolensk was sentenced to six and a half years in prison under an aggregation of several Criminal Code articles. However, we noted four new cases against six people opened inappropriately during the review period (in Moscow, Udmurtia, Kemerovo and Tula regions).

According to our data, not a single sentence was issued under Article 280¹ CC on repeated calls for separatism in 2022, as well as a year earlier. However, we know about several fines under Article 20.3.2 CAO, similar in its composition but used for the first violation in 12 months (see below for more information).

 

Now let us review the articles about involvement in extremist organizations.

At least 64 inappropriate verdicts against 131 people were issued under Article 282² CC on organizing the activities of an organization banned for extremism, or participation in it (a year earlier, according to our data, there were 84 inappropriate verdicts against 132 people under this article). Of these, 58 sentences against 116 people (vs. 68 against 105 in 2021) were issued for continuing the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses communities: 44 people were sentenced to imprisonment (the maximum term was seven years in a minimum-security penal colony), 68 people received suspended sentences, 11 people were fined, one was sentenced to compulsory labor; additional restrictions were often imposed as well. Six verdicts against 15 people were issued for organizing cells of the banned Islamic movement Tablighi Jamaat or participating in their activities (a year earlier the corresponding numbers were 13 verdicts against 20 people) with 11 of these people sentenced to suspended sentences, and four to real prison terms. The number of those inappropriately prosecuted under Article 282² as part of the cases initiated in 2022 reached at least 88, the majority of whom (77 people) were Jehovah's Witnesses. For comparison, in 2021, we counted about 200 defendants in new cases under Article 282² CC.

We view as inappropriate eight sentences issued under Article 282³ CC on financing extremist activities against 19 Jehovah's Witnesses; two of them were found guilty only under this article. In 2022, charges under this article, along with other charges, were brought against Jehovah's Witnesses and supporters of Alexei Navalny.

We saw no obviously inappropriate verdicts in 2022 under Article 282¹ CC on organizing an extremist community and participation in it (there were two a year earlier). However, new defendants were added to the wide-reaching case against Alexei Navalny and his associates – nine people in different regions of Russia. They also face charges under Article 239, and we view as inappropriate the sentence issued to one of the defendants under Article 239 Part 3 CC only (participation in a non-profit organization whose activities involved inciting citizens to commit unlawful acts, taking the hate motive into account) after charges under Article 282¹ CC against him were dropped. A similar verdict against two people, one of whom became a defendant in 2022, was issued in early 2023. In 2022, the case under Article 239 CC was also opened against eight members of the Vesna movement, but we do not yet know whether these charges take the hate motive into account.

In total, we counted 255 people inappropriately charged with extremist crimes or related offenses in 2022 (vs. 243 in 2021).

 

As for the anti-terrorist articles of the Criminal Code, as we mentioned above, we consider inappropriate the sentences issued for continuing the activities of the banned Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir. Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters are charged under Article 205⁵ CC (organizing the activities of a terrorist organization or participating in it), sometimes in combination with Article 278 and Article 30 (preparation for forcible seizure of power) or Article 205¹ (support for terrorist activities). In 2022, there were 20 such sentences against 52 people (vs. eight against 23 in 2021), 30 of them Crimean Tatars. The offenders were sentenced to incarceration ranging from 11 to 19 years in a maximum-security penal colony, usually with part of the term to be served in prison, often with various additional restrictions. According to our information, at least nine out of 28 people detained on suspicion of Hizb ut-Tahrir involvement were placed under arrest in 2022 (we knew about 35 individuals arrested in 2021).

We consider inappropriate only two guilty verdicts issued under Article 205² CC on propaganda or justification of terrorism, both related to statements about Hizb ut-Tahrir. One case, against a blogger from St. Petersburg, was closed due to the expiry of the limitation period. We find at least one case opened in 2022 (in Kazan) potentially problematic and believe that many more such cases exist, but we increasingly lack information to make assessments.

 

Before proceeding to our data on the use of the CAO articles aimed at combating extremism, we would like to reiterate that, in reality, hundreds or even thousands of cases are filed under these articles. Thus, according to the statistics provided by the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court, only in the first half of 2022, sanctions under Article 20.3 and 20.3.1 CAO were imposed 2690 times (vs. 3183 under Article 20.3 CAO and 936 under Article 20.3.1 CAO for the entire 2021), and 507 times under Article 20.29 CAO (vs. 1319 times for the entire 2021).[28] However, in many cases, we have insufficient information on the reason for the sanctions and are unable to evaluate the extent of their legitimacy.

We have no data of our own on the application of the new Article 20.3.3 CAO that punishes for discrediting the actions of the Russian armed forces and officials abroad. According to the data of the “Pravosudie” State Automated System collected by the Mediazona portal, as of the second half of December 2022, the total number of such cases submitted to Russian courts reached 5518.

At least 120 people (vs. 55 in 2021) faced inappropriate charges under Article 20.3 CAO for the public display of Nazi, extremist or other prohibited symbols, according to our data. Three individuals were punished twice, and one person – 23 times. The offenders in all cases were individuals, and usually activists, but also ordinary social media users. The charges were most commonly based on posts that included symbols of projects that law enforcement agencies associated with Alexei Navalny, as well as on various images posted online and comparing the letter “Z” and the swastika. In 56 cases, the courts imposed a fine, in 50 cases – administrative arrest (here we count as one case the arrests imposed on one of the defendants under 23 reports); in seven cases the sanctions were lifted, in two cases we do not know the outcome, and in the remaining cases, we do not know what punishment was imposed. (We have no information on any criminal cases initiated inappropriately under the new Article 282⁴ for the repeated display of prohibited symbols.)

According to our information, at least 94 inappropriate cases were filed under Article 20.29 for mass distribution of extremist materials or storage of such materials with intent to distribute (vs. 90 in 2021). The defendants included 93 individuals and one legal entity. 65 cases pertained to sharing on social networks of a video by Navalny supporters about the unfulfilled promises of United Russia, which was very popular on the Internet more than a decade ago. Another 16 cases pertained to the distribution of peaceful religious materials, most often Islamic, that we regard as inappropriately banned. We know that in 89 of these cases, the courts imposed a fine as punishment; one case resulted in arrest, three cases were discontinued, and the outcome of one remaining case is unknown. Inappropriately punished individuals included opposition activists and believers that belonged to various religious movements as well as ordinary users of social networks.

We regard as inappropriate 65 cases under Article 20.3.1 CAO on inciting hatred or enmity as well as humiliation of human dignity based on belonging to a social group (a year earlier, we counted 24 such cases). The defendants were 64 individuals (one of them was punished twice and another one three times) and one legal entity. A fine was imposed in 39 cases, community service in 10 cases, arrests for a period of five to 15 days in 10 cases, three cases were closed, and the outcome of the last three is unknown. In the overwhelming majority of cases, inappropriate sanctions targeted critical statements against the authorities and the law enforcement made by internet users at different points in time. Some statements were still related to coronavirus restrictions, and some to recent events including the military operation in Ukraine.

At least 22 cases were filed in 2022 under Article 20.1 Parts 3–5 CAO (dissemination of information expressing disrespect for the state and the society in an indecent form on the Internet). There were at least 37 such cases in 2021 and 30 in 2020. A fine was imposed on 19 occasions; in one case a repeated offender was placed under arrest for three days; proceedings in eight cases were terminated. In almost all cases, the charges were related to disrespect for government representatives.

We know of five cases filed under the new Article 20.3.4 CAO that punishes calling for sanctions against Russia, its organizations or its citizens. Three people and one legal entity were fined for amounts ranging from 35 to 300 thousand rubles. In one case the court returned the claim to the prosecutor's office. (According to our information, no criminal cases under Article 284² CC on repeated calls for sanctions were initiated in 2022.)

The new article on equating the actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany during World War II, Article 13.48 CAO, was applied at least five times, according to our information. One of these cases was closed, one person was fined one thousand rubles, and two others were placed under arrest for 15 days (one of them twice).

We recorded three cases of sanctions imposed under Article 20.3.2 CAO on calls to violate the territorial integrity of Russia, not accompanied by calls for any violent separatist actions (in such cases, we regard sanctions for discussing territorial issues as inappropriate). All three offenders were fined.

 

In 2022, we had serious doubts about the appropriateness of the decisions to recognize five organizations as extremist. We view the bans against the All-Tatar Public Center (VTOTs) in Tatarstan and the interregional Vesna movement in Moscow as inappropriate and the decision to ban a “citizens of the USSR” group in Samara, known as the Novokuybyshevsk All-Soviet Central Executive Committee as questionable. In addition, it is unclear on what grounds Columbine was recognized as a terrorist organization, since no available evidence suggests that school shooting fans, in Russia or abroad, form a single community. Finally, recognizing the activities of the Meta Corporation, associated with the social networks Facebook and Instagram, as extremist was also inappropriate, although, strictly speaking, this decision did not ban Meta per se.

 

The Federal List of Extremist Materials added 81 new items in 2022 (entries No. 5254 – 5334), compared to 110 new entries added in 2021, i.e., the downward trend of recent years, continues. We consider only eight items included inappropriately (vs. 19 in 2021): peaceful Islamic materials, an app with a library of Jehovah's Witnesses materials, the Rose of the Seraphites: The Bogomil Gospel by Bishop Ioann (Veniamin Bereslavsky) of the Orthodox Church of the Sovereign Mother of God, a leaflet by Citizens of the USSR and others. We have to add, as usual, that we are not familiar with all the materials on the Federal List, and some other materials could also have been banned inappropriately. We believe that the mechanism of banning materials and adding them to a special long list is ineffective and leads to sanctions for disseminating information that poses no actual danger to society.

Appendices

The cases, initiated in 2022, for which no verdicts were issued in 2022:

Appendix 1. СС Article 280³

Appendix 2. СС Article 207³ Part 2 Paragraph “e”

Appendix 3. СС Article 214 Part 2

 

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[1] The information provided in the report is based on the materials published in the “Misuse of Anti-Extremism" section of SOVA Center’s website. See: Misuse of Anti-Extremism // SOVA Center (https://www.sova-center.ru/misuse/). The principles of the section can be found on the following page: About Misuse of Anti-Extremism Section // SOVA Center, 2022 (https://www.sova-center.ru/static-pages/anti-about/).

[2] Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, The Rational Rabbit (https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.71860/2015.71860.Tales-From-Msaltykov---Shchedrin_djvu.txt).

[3] See: What is an “extremist crime” // SOVA Center (https://www.sova-center.ru/directory/2010/06/d19018/).

[4] More than 10,000 Internet resources fell under military censorship // Roskomsvoboda. 2023. February 8 (https://roskomsvoboda.org/post/10000-military-cens/).

[5] The Prosecutor's Office is increasingly focusing on its human rights function // Izvestia. 2023. January 23 (https://iz.ru/1457943/elena-balaian-alena-nefedova/prokuratura-vse-bolshe-delaet-aktcent-na-svoei-pravozashchitnoi-funktcii).

[6] See: Judicial Statistics Data // Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. 2023. February (http://www.cdep.ru/?id=79).

[7] For more details, see: Commentary on the Growing Number of Convictions under Articles on Incitement to Terrorism and Extremism by SOVA Center // SOVA Center. 2022. November 28 (https://www.sova-center.ru/en/misuse/reports-analyses/2022/11/d47023/).

[8]At the end of January 2023, the Central District Court of Tyumen sentenced Kirill Martyushev to three years in a minimum-security penal colony with a two-year ban on administering websites on the Internet.

[9] See: Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of June 28, 2011, No. 11 “On Judicial Practice in Criminal Cases on Crimes of an Extremist Nature” // Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. 2011. June 29 (https://vsrf.ru/documents/own/8255/).

[10] On January 11, 2023, the Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg found Miron Fyodorov guilty and fined him 70 thousand rubles.

[11] See: Verkhovsky A. Why the decision to ban the NBP should be overturned // SOVA Center. 2007. August 4 (https://www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/publications/2007/08/d11167/).

[12] Russian courts received over 5,500 police reports on "discrediting" the army // Mediazona. 2022. December 21 (https://zona.media/news/2022/12/21/badarmy5500).

[13] We would like to express our gratitude to the OVD-Info project for their assistance in collecting data on criminal prosecution under Articles 2803, 2073 and 214 CC. See: “The Anti-War Case” OVD-Info guide // OVD-Info (https://data.ovdinfo.org/antivoennoe-delo-gid-ovd-info).

[14] Under the federal law “On Countering extremist activity,” its definition includes the commission of crimes for the motives specified in Paragraph “e” of Article 63 Part 1 CC, i.e., for the motives of hatred.

[15] On January 25, 2023, the Pushkinsky District Court of St. Petersburg overturned Kazanets's sentence. The case was remanded to the first instance court for retrial.

[16] On January 16, 2023, the Lomonosovsky District Court of Arkhangelsk found Elizaveta Bychkova, along with Yegor Butakov, who also formerly worked for the Navalny headquarters in Arkhangelsk and was charged back in 2021, guilty under Article 239 Part 3 CC, taking into account the motive of hatred. The charge against them under Article 2821 was dropped, and they were sentenced to a year of restriction of liberty. The case was reviewed under special procedure at the request of the defendants, who pleaded guilty and actively cooperated with the investigation.

[17] Additional information about the “citizens of the USSR” in Novokuybyshevsk can be found in Mikhail Akhmetiev’s book Citizens without the USSR. Communities of “Soviet citizens” in modern Russia (Grazhdane bez SSSR. Soobshchestva "sovetskikh grazhdan" v sovremennoy Rossii). Moscow: SOVA Center, 2022.

[18] On February 20, 2023, the Golovinsky District Court of Moscow released Polina Morugina from criminal responsibility and sent her to compulsory treatment.

[19] The term comes from the name of the American school in which in 1999 two students – Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris – shot 13 people and committed suicide.

[20] In February 2023, it was reported that the 2nd Western District Military Court sentenced a teenager from Stary Oskol to six and a half years in a juvenile correctional colony.

[21] For more details, see: Yudina N. Attack on Organizations: Anti-extremism law enforcement in Russia in 2022 with regard to countering public statements and organized activity, including countering radical nationalism // SOVA Center. 2023. March 21 (https://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2023/03/d47033/).

[22] Verdicts that were issued but then overturned are not included in the statistics.

[23] See: Jehovah's Witnesses under persecution. Results of 2022 // Jehovah's Witnesses. Legal situation in Russia. 2022. December 23.

[24] See: Resolution No. 32 of the plenary meeting of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation adopted on October 28, 2021 “On Amendments to Certain Resolutions of the Plenary Meeting of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on Criminal Cases” (Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. November 2021, https://vsrf.ru/documents/own/30487/). According to the clarifications given by the Supreme Court, for criminal proceedings under Article 2822, courts should name specific socially dangerous actions committed by the guilty party, the significance of these actions for continuing or resuming the activities of a prohibited organization, and the motives for committing them. In addition, the Supreme Court indicated that, in the event of a ban against a religious organization, individual or joint religious worship by its former members should not be interpreted as participation in an extremist organization.

[25] Our position is based, in particular, on the ECHR judgment on the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was made as part of the decision on the complaint of two convicted members of the organization against the actions of the Russian authorities. The ECHR stated that although neither the teachings nor the practice of Hizb ut-Tahrir allow us to consider the party a terrorist organization and it does not explicitly call for violence, its prohibition on other grounds would be justified, since it presumes, in the future, the overthrow of some existing political systems with the aim of establishing a dictatorship based on the Sharia law; it is also characterized by anti-Semitism and radical anti-Israeli propaganda (for which Hizb ut-Tahrir was banned in Germany in 2003), as well as categorical rejection of democracy and equal rights and recognition of violence against the countries, which the party considers as aggressors against the “land of Islam,” as legitimate. The goals of Hizb ut-Tahrir clearly contradict the values of the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular, the commitment to the peaceful settlement of international conflicts and the inviolability of human life, the recognition of civil and political rights and democracy. Activities for such purposes are not protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.

[26] Yudina N. The Old and the New Names in the Reports. Hate Crimes and Counteraction to Them in Russia in 2022 // SOVA Center. 2023. January 30 (https://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2023/01/d47028/).

[27] Yudina N. Attack on Organizations...

[28] See: Consolidated statistical data on the activities of federal courts of general jurisdiction and magistrates’ courts for the first half of 2022 // Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. 2022 (http://www.cdep.ru/index.php?id=79&item=7096); Consolidated statistical data on the activities of federal courts of general jurisdiction and magistrates’ courts for 2021 // Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.