Summary
Criminal Prosecution : For Public Statements : For Participation in Extremist and Banned Groups and Organizations
Federal List of Extremist Materials
The Banning of Organizations as Extremist
Prosecution for Administrative Offences
Crime and punishment statistics

This report^[1] focuses on countering the incitement of hatred and political activity of radical groups, primarily nationalists, through the use of anti-extremism legislation. This counter-activity includes a number of articles of the Criminal Code (CC), several articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO), mechanisms for banning organizations and "information materials", blocking of Internet sites and resources, etc.

Countering hate crimes is not the subject of this report: that activity is covered in a separate, previously published report^[2]. Yet another report, published in parallel, examines the cases of law enforcement that we consider unlawful and inappropriate; it also examines the legislative innovations of the past year in the field of anti-extremism^[3].

Summary

The decline in the scale of criminal prosecution for public statements, observed in 2018 and especially in 2019 seems to have ceased^[4]. The number of those convicted of “extremist statements” (incitement of hatred, incitement to extremism or terrorism, etc.) has increased slightly in the past year, although it has not yet reached even the figures of 2014. The number of those convicted under the once widely used Article 282 of the CC after its partial decriminalization is many times lower, which cannot be said about those convicted under articles on public calls to extremism and terrorism: their numbers have remained at about the same level or even increased. At the same time, the interpretation of the "justification of terrorism" has become qualitatively wider. Both of these articles fall under the responsibility not of the secret police Centers E but of the FSB; in general, the FSB’s interference in the investigation of anti-extremism cases continues to increase, and since this department is geared toward more dangerous acts, its methods are therefore more cruel. However, what justifies such a hard crackdown in the cases of ordinary reposts of extremist content on the Internet is unclear.

The number of those convicted of participating in extremist and terrorist groups and organizations has increased. The broader application of the anti-terrorism legislation is also evident in this sector of law enforcement. In particular, for the first time ever, the article on participation in terrorist groups was applied to national-populists.

The number of people charged in administrative cases also remained at about the same level as a year earlier; although there were cases of inciting hatred against new "social groups" - quarantine measures supporters and opponents. The growth of the Federal List of Extremist Materials slowed down slightly in 2020; though the list was updated in the same illiterate manner as before.

The pace of updating the Federal List of Extremist Organizations has slowed down, but the quality remains at the same level as in previous years. The list of organizations recognized as terrorist, which is published on the FSB website, was not updated at all in 2020.

In April 2020, the Trump administration declared the Russian Orthodox-monarchist organization Russian Imperial Movement a terrorist organization. It was then recognized as a terror group by Canada as well.

Unfortunately, we cannot estimate the scale of anti-extremist blocking of Internet resources in 2020. A year earlier, we gave up identifying the incidents of blocking due to the unrepresentativeness of the obtained data (we managed to identify less than a tenth of the blockings) and focused instead on official statistics. But in 2020, Roskomnadzor stopped publishing data on blocking access to prohibited (or other allegedly dangerous) materials, having reported[5] only that 188 thousands of extremist materials were removed on its request. As a result, this part of law enforcement is becoming more and more closed,.

When analyzing law enforcement in general, it seems that there exists certain inhibition of the work of the law enforcement system in the part of anti-extremism policy that is aimed at more or less legitimate counteraction to ideologically motivated security threats which fall in the Russian law into the combined category of "extremism". We can only guess why this is happening. Perhaps this is due to the quarantine measures, perhaps such threats are perceived as less politically critical, or perhaps the authorities have made a conscious decision to rely less on these tools. Time will probably show whether this trend will continue and what exactly is causing it.

Criminal Prosecution

 

 

For Public Statements

According to our incomplete data, the number of convictions for “extremist statements” (incitement to hatred, incitement to extremism or terrorism, etc.) increased slightly in 2020 compared to a year earlier. SOVA Center has information about 99 convictions against 111 people in 49 regions of the country^[6]. In 2019, we had information about 73 such convictions against 79 people in 47 regions. These numbers do not include the convictions that we find inappropriate: in 2020, we found 13 convictions against 19 people inappropriate[7]. Acquittals are also excluded from our statistics (there was one such verdict in 2020). We do not include in the statistics and record separately the instances of release from criminal liability with payment of court fines, an alternative introduced in Russian law in 2016. In 2020, we recorded two instances of such releases from liability with payment of court fines. We have no information about any instances of this alternative being applied in anti-extremism law enforcement in 2019; in 2018 we had information about 11 such releases from liability in cases concerning “extremist statements”.

Speaking about the overall statistics, our information about convictions is, regretfully, far from complete. According to the data posted on the Supreme Court website^[8], just in the first half of 2020, 132 people were convicted of extremist statements (Articles 282, 280, 280¹, 205², 354¹, Parts 1 and 2 of Article 148 of the CC), including those for whom this was the main charge^[9]. This is higher than the 115 such sentences reported in 2019^[10]. In the report, we used our data, since the data of the Supreme Court does not permit a meaningful analysis to be carried out.

 

This is the third year that we are using a more detailed approach to conviction classification^[11].

We deem appropriate those convictions where we have seen the statements, or are at least familiar with their contents, and believe that the courts have passed convictions in accordance with the law. In our assessment of appropriateness and lawfulness, we apply the Rabat Plan of Action on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence, developed by the UN; it contains a six-part assessment of the public danger of public statements, supported by the Russian Supreme Court almost in its entirety^[12].

In 2020, we considered four convictions against five individuals lawful. An example of such a lawful conviction is the verdict the Presnensky District Court of Moscow in the case of the two writers well-known in the ultra-right circles, Oleg Platonov, the author of the banned books “The Mystery of the Zion Protocols” and “The Zion Protocols in World Politics” and many other similar works, and Valery Yerchak, Co-Chair of the Union of the Russian People (SRN) and the Belarusian branch of the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods (SPB). They were convicted under Paragraph C, Part 2 of Article 282 of the CC (incitement to national hatred by an organized group) for publishing of the anti-Semitic book by Yerchak titled “Word and Deed of Ivan the Terrible” (entry #1381 of the Federal List of Extremist Materials)^[13].

In the vast majority of cases – marked as “Unknown” (64 convictions against 70 people) – we are not familiar with the exact content of the materials and therefore cannot assess the appropriateness of the court decisions.

Convictions that we find difficult to assess fall under the category of “Uncertain” (seven convictions against eight people): for example, we find one of the charges appropriate but not the other.

Our statistics in the “Other” category (24 convictions against 28 people) included individuals who called for attacks on government officials and those who were convicted under extremism articles of the Criminal Code more appropriately than not but whose prosecution cannot be classified as counteraction to nationalism and xenophobia.

According to our data, Article 280 of the CC (public calls for extremist activity) was applied in the vast majority of the verdicts^[14], that is, in 66 verdicts against 75 people. In 52 of these convictions (53 people), this was the only charge. In some instances, it was combined with other charges, for example, with Article 214 of the CC (vandalism)^[15].

Article 282 was applied in 10 convictions known to us against 15 people. In addition to the anti-Semitic writers mentioned above, others (with the exception of the two AUE supporters, see below) were charged for similar offenses under Article 20.3.1 of the CAO (incitement of national hatred) earlier in the year and were charged with a criminal repeat offense within a year after that.

We have information about one conviction under Article 280¹ of the CC (public calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation). The Supreme Court of the occupied Crimea sentenced in absentia the Crimean Tatar businessman, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimean government and owner of the ATR TV channel Lenur Islyamov to 19 years of imprisonment in a high-security colony and to the restriction of freedom for one year under a combination of Article 280 with Part 1 of Article 208 of the CC (organisation of an illegal armed formation) and Paragraphs A and B of Part 2 of Article 281 of the CC (sabotage committed by an organized group and entailing grave consequences). According to the court, Islyamov planned to blow up power transmission towers in the Kherson region in November 2015; for this purpose, he "created and headed the illegal armed formation Crimean Tatar Volunteer Battalion named after Noman Celebijikhan". In addition, Islyamov was accused of repeatedly calling in the media for the returning of Crimea to Ukraine. Unfortunately, the Prosecutor General's Office did not specify the statements in question and whether they contained calls for armed struggle, so we refrain from assessment of the verdict under Article 280^{1 [16]}.

Article 354¹ of the CC (denial of the facts established by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis Countries, approval of the crimes established by this verdict as well as the dissemination of deliberately false information about the activities of the USSR during World War II) was cited in three verdicts against three individuals (for two of them, it was the one and only charge). All three court decisions punished those who published statements and comments on VKontakte containing "approval of Nazi actions, denial of the facts established by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial and Punishment of Major War Criminals", including, in one case, the approval of the Holocaust.

Article 205² of the CC (public calls to carry out terrorist activities) has, in recent years, gained popularity among law enforcement officers. According to the Supreme Court data, in the first half of 2020, a total of 53 people were charged under this article, for 43 of them this was the main charge^[17]. SOVA Center is aware of 31 sentences under Article 205² of the CC handed down to 35 people (not including wrongful convictions). In 23 instances, this was the only article applied in the conviction. In six other cases, it was applied in combination with Article 280.

In previous years, the majority of the sentences under this article was applied in convictions for radical Islamic propaganda (as far as SOVA Center is aware), whereas in 2020, the scope of its application turned out to be more diverse.

As before, some were charged with calls to join ISIL or other radical Islamic organizations or to travel to war zones and fight, a total of eight sentences. In at least five such cases, the calls were carried out by convicts in the colonies.

Two sentences were handed down for calling for the violent overthrow of the government. In six cases, the sentences were issued for justifying the actions of Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who committed a terrorist attack in the FSB’s building in the Arkhangelsk region, and calling for the repetition of such acts.

Six sentences were handed down for justifying the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques (New Zealand) committed on 5 March 2019.

Three sentences were handed down for calls for radical far-right violence, including endorsing the actions of one of the leaders of the National Socialist Society (NSO), Maxim (Adolf) Bazylev, and the neo-Nazi Militant Terrorist Organization (BTO).

In some instances, this article was applied in combination with other anti-terrorism articles of the Criminal Code, including Part 1 and 2 of Article 205⁴ of the CC (creation of and participation in a terrorist group), Part 1 of Article 30, Paragraph A, Part 2 of Article 205 of the CC (preparation for carrying out of a terrorist act by carrying out an explosion), etc.

 

Penalties for public statements were distributed as follows:

• 39 people were sentenced to imprisonment;
• 50 received suspended sentences without any additional measures;
• 20 were sentenced to various fines;
• 1 was sentenced to the restriction of liberty;
• 1 unknown.

 

 

The number of those sentenced to imprisonment was significantly lower than in the previous year (in 2019, we reported 50 prison sentences).

15 received prison terms in conjunction with charges other than statements, including participation in extremist and terrorist groups and organizations. 11 were already serving prison time, and their terms were increased. Eight people were charged under the “terrorist” Article 205² of the CC (see more below). One person was convicted twice in the course of the year under an administrative article; he was sentenced to a fine for a criminal repeat offense but refused to pay it and was eventually sentenced to a penal colony.

Four individuals, however, received prison terms in the absence of any of the above-mentioned circumstances (or, perhaps, in some cases, we just do not know about them). One received a prison sentence for calling for knife attacks on police officers in Facebook comments. Another, a 59-year-old Ravil Tukhvatullin, convicted in Ufa under Part 2 of Article 280 of the CC, according to law enforcement agencies, heads an unregistered public organization Association of the Indigenous Peoples of Rus of the Ufa Guberniya, recognizes himself as a citizen of the USSR^[18] and a deputy of the long-defunct Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It is reported that from February to October 2018, Tukhvatullin published videos on his page in VKontakte, in which he called for the violent overthrow of state power, mass riots, and revolution. The court sentenced him to 1.5 years in a penal colony. We are not familiar with the materials published by him.

Even less is known about the other two cases: one person was jailed for posting certain “extremist” material on Instagram, the other for “calls for violence against representatives of certain ethnic groups” on VKontakte. We do not know who these people are, but if they were not widely known and did not carry out systematic propaganda, real imprisonment seems to us an excessive punishment.

In comparison with the previous year, the situation has improved: in 2019, we reported seven convictions “for words only”, i.e. without the listed aggravating circumstances, 12 in 2018, seven in 2017, five in 2016, 16 (the highest number) in 2015, and only two in each of the years 2013 and 2014^[19]. If we were to look at the share of prison sentences “for words only” (without any of the above-mentioned “aggravating circumstances”) to the total number of those convicted of statements in these years (leaving out the obviously unlawful sentences), we would see that the share of such convictions was 3.6% in 2020; 6.8% in 2019, 5.5% in 2018, 2.8% in 2017, 2% in 2016, 6.5% in 2015, and slightly higher than 1% in years 2013 and 2014.

 

As in previous reports, we have excluded Article 205² of the CC from our calculations (above) of those convicted "for words only", because, firstly, the penalties under the “terrorist” article are predictably harsher, and, secondly, the degree of our awareness of the specific content of cases under this article is too low. In addition, up until 2018, the vast majority of sentences under Article 205² of the CC had nothing to do with countering incitement to hatred. However, law enforcement under this article is expanding (see above), and it is often applied together with Article 280 of the CC.

In 2020, eight people were sentenced to imprisonment under this article (without the circumstances listed above), four of them under the combination of Article 205² with Article 280, one person in combination with Article 319 of the CC (insulting a representative of the authorities). If one is to believe the reports of the prosecutor's office, these people really called for the commission of terrorist acts in an aggressive form, but it is not clear how large their audience was, and we do not know the specific content of their publications.

 

In 2020, the proportion of suspended sentences has remained virtually the same at 45% (50 out of 111), compared to the 44% of the previous year. The share of the convicts whose sentences did not involve prison time (actual or suspended), i.e. those sentenced to fines or mandatory labor, has been continuously declining for four years. And it is a pity, because these punishments, we believe, would be more effective than suspended sentences, both for convinced propagandists of hatred and for ordinary re-posters on social media.

In terms of additional punishments, in 2020 we have information about the following bans: on public speeches (4), on activities related to media appearances (7), on administering Internet websites (9), and on Internet use in general (12). This data is probably incomplete.

 

As usual, the vast majority of sentences were imposed for materials posted on the Internet – 87 out of 99, or 87%, compared with 86% in 2019.

These materials were posted on:

• social networks – 84 (36 on VKontakte, 2 on Facebook; 3 on Instagram; 1 on Odnoklassniki, 42 on unidentified social networks^[20]);
• messengers – 2 (1 of them on WhatsApp);
• YouTube – 2;
• blogs – 1;
• unspecified online resources – 12.

 

The types of content are as follows (different types of content may have been posted in the same account or even on the same page):

• comments and remarks (on social networks and forums) – 27;
• other texts – 28;
• videos – 16;
• images (drawings) – 11;
• audio (songs) – 9;
• administration of groups and communities – 5;
• photographs – 2;
• selling items on the Internet – 1;
• unspecified – 12.

 

While the breakdown reflected in the first list has remained roughly the same for the past nine years (see previous annual reports on this topic^[21]), the second list reflects major changes: video materials have definitely lost their leading position in favor of various text formats, including comments on social media. So far, we have been unable to explain this fact.

 

It is interesting to see whom all these public statements were targeting. Where possible, as we became familiar with the materials or at least the descriptions of the prosecutor's offices and investigative committees^[22], we identified the following targets of hostility in the sentences passed in 2020 (some of the materials expressed hostility to several groups):

• ethnic enemies in general – 41 (natives of the Caucasus – 8, natives of Central Asia – 3, Jews – 7, non-Slavs in general – 5, unspecified – 18);
• law enforcement officers – 22 (6 of these contained approval of the actions of Mikhail Zhlobitsky);
• Muslims – 14;
• Russian Orthodox – 4;
• “infidels” (calls for armed jihad, romanticizing militants, calls to join ISIS) – 5;
• Covid-19 positive – 1;
• subculture groups – 1 (rapper);
• unknown – 14.

 

For all its imperfection, we believe that this classification more or less reflects the trends in law enforcement and correlates with our understanding of the situation: the majority of sentences are imposed for ethno-xenophobia, and the second place is divided between statements against the authorities (and even specifically against their repressive apparatus) and statements motivated by religious or anti-religious xenophobia.

 

The number of convictions for offline statements (12 for 20 people) turned out to be roughly the same as in 2019 (13). They were distributed as follows:

• writing and publishing a book – 2 (4 people);
• graffiti – 2^[23];
• flyers – 1;
• engaging in propaganda in prison – 6 (10 people);
• unspecified episodes of propaganda by members of far-right gangs – 1 (3 people).

 

We may consider prosecution for publishing books and putting up leaflets proportionate (depending on their content of course), but we doubt the need for criminal prosecution for individual graffiti on buildings.

We have doubts about the lawfulness of the sentences for terrorist propaganda given to those who are already in prison. There are certainly quite a lot of individuals prone to violence among prison population; therefore, any promotion of hatred in prison is, by definition, dangerous. However, it is not clear whether the key parameter in the articles of law applicable to statements – the audience size – has been taken into account: it is hardly possible to consider a conversation in a narrow circle of several cellmates to be public. In most cases, the audience size is not reported, as a result, we are not sure of the legality of the sentences imposed^[24].

For Participation in Extremist and Banned Groups and Organizations

In 2020, we have information about 12 verdicts against 34 offenders under articles 282¹ (organizing an extremist group), 282² (organizing the activity of an extremist organization), 205⁵ (participation in the activities of a terrorist organization), and 205⁴ of the CC (participation in the activities of a terrorist group), which is slightly more than in 2019, when we wrote about 10 sentences against 28 people. These numbers do not include inappropriate convictions, whose number in the past year was much higher than other categories: we have deemed inappropriate 44 sentences against 91 people^[25].

 

In 2020, Article 282¹ of the CC was cited in six verdicts against 20 people. As is customary, it was primarily applied against members of ultra-right groups.

Three members of the unregistered monarchist neo-Nazi organization Baltic Vanguard of the Russian Resistance (Baltiiskii avangard russkogo soprpotivleniya, BARS) were convicted in Kaliningrad. Alexander Orshulevich was sentenced to eight years in a general regime penal colony, Alexander Mamaev (a hieromonk of one of the alternative Orthodox churches) and Igor Ivanov each got six years in a penal colony^[26]. According to the case file, Orshulevich created this small group with the aim of “forcibly seizing power in the Kaliningrad region by committing a number of extremist crimes, including those aimed at the Kaliningrad region’s secession from the Russian Federation and its sovereign existence within the European Union”. In March 2011, he drew a swastika on a memorial plaque “In the Memory of the Genocide of Persons of Jewish Nationality during Kristallnacht in 1939” and wrote an anti-Semitic slogan on the Internet. Orshulevich, Ivanov and Mamaev were allegedly preparing for another propaganda campaign, for which they made stencils for writing xenophobic texts in public places in Kaliningrad.

Three far-right activists were convicted in Astrakhan. Two young men were convicted under a combination of Art. 282¹, Part 3 of Art. 222¹ of the CC (illegal acquisition and storage of explosives), Part 3 of 223¹ of the CC (illegal manufacture of weapons); the third man – under Art. 282¹ and Part 2 of Art. 280 of the CC. The only adult at the time of the crime was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison, and the other two – to five years in prison and fines of 15,000 rubles each. The young men promoted neo-Nazi ideology, recruited new members into the group, conducted trainings using military equipment, built explosive and incendiary devices, and planned to commit violent crimes. During the searches, home-made explosives and “extremist literature” were found and seized.

In the Tomsk region, the court sentenced the members of Vesna Crew group under a combination of Art. 282¹, Part 1 of Art. 280, Part 1 and Paragraphs A and C of Part 2 of Art. 282 of the CC. The group organizer was sentenced to four years in a general regime penal colony, one of the members – to 3.5 years in a penal colony, and the other two received suspended prison sentences. According to the investigation, the young people published videos on the Internet, where they boasted of “acts of vandalism against the property of persons of non-Slavic appearance” and attacks on “these persons and representatives of certain social groups, including with the use of improvised weapons”.

In Yekaterinburg, the garrison military court sentenced three administrators of VKontakte public pages who promoted AUE (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.U.E.), depending on their roles, under a combination of Art. 282¹, Part 2 of Art. 280, Part 2 of Art. 282 of the CC to terms ranging from four years of probation to seven years in a penal colony. According to the central office of the FSB, which was involved in the investigation, spouses Nikolai and Natalia Babarika administered the public page of AUE^[27]. Their friend Artem Zuev administered the Internet community, organized the work of the printing shop Absolut, and, together with Nikolai and Natalia, sold items decorated in the style inspired by a thief's lifestyle through social networks. Natalia was also accused of publishing 14 posts calling for attacks on police officers and the FSB. We question the legality and justification of conviction under anti-extremism articles in this case^[28].

In addition to those mentioned, a verdict was passed in Moscow in the infamous case of New Greatness^[29], whose leader and one of the members had a nationalist background. However, no elements of racism and nationalism have been found in the activity of New Greatness. The group was infiltrated by several provocateurs at once, nonetheless, none of the group members were charged with any “crimes of an extremist nature”, which calls into question the application of Article 282¹ of the CC.

 

Article 282² of the CC was invoked in three sentences against three people.

Just as a year earlier, supporters of the banned Ukrainian Praviy Sektor (“Right Sector”) movement were charged with this article. In Adygea, a prisoner of a local penal colony was sentenced to five years in prison under Parts 1.1 and 2 of Art. 282² of the CC (recruitment into an extremist organization and participation in it). The defendant had created a Right Sector cell in the colony and persuaded other convicts to join it. In the Stavropol Territory, the Pyatigorsk city Court found Alexander Atamanov guilty under Part 1.1 of Art. 282² of the CC and Part 2 of Art. 228 of the CC (Large-scale possession of narcotic substances) and sentenced him to five years in a penal colony. Atamanov was detained on March 23, 2019. During the search, three packages with drugs and 25 Right Sector leaflets were found. According to law enforcement agencies, on 23 December 2018, Atamanov “by means of persuasion, requests, proposals, and proclaiming slogans” was involving three persons in the activities of Praviy Sektor and distributed leaflets with its symbols.

The third offender convicted under Article 282² of the CC was a 62-year-old supporter of the banned Union of Slavic Forces of Russia (SSSR, spelled as USSR) Leonid Yanushkovsky. A court in Ulyanovsk sentenced him to five years of probation. According to investigators, between September 2019 and February 2020, Yanushkovsky “held, according to the organization’s hierarchy, the position of Acting Head of the Ulyanovsk region of the RSFSR (an abbreviation for Russia from the Soviet era)” and “held meetings ... campaigned and called on people to join the movement”.

 

In 2020, Article 205⁴ was applied in convictions of nine people. In previous reports, we wrote that this article was applied almost exclusively to radical Islamists, but in 2020, it was used to convict other kinds of offenders.

Thus, in Moscow, the 2^nd Western District Military Court issued a verdict in the case of three supporters of the banned movement Artpodgotovka^[30], Andrey Tolkachev, Yury Korniy, and Andrey Keptya were found guilty under Part 2 of Art. 205⁴ and Paragraph A of Part 2 of Art. 205 in combination with Part 1 of Art. 30 of CC (preparation of a terrorist attack by a group of persons) and were sentenced to terms ranging from six to 13 years in a high-security penal colony. Artpodgotovka supporters, together with three other young men, were detained in the early morning of October 12 on Manezhnaya Square, where they came to set fire to pallets of hay left there after a city fair. In our opinion, imprisonment under the articles on terrorism and participation in a terrorist group for a thwarted attempt to set fire to hay in an empty square at 5 am is an excessively harsh measure.

Mikhail Ustyantsev was convicted under a combination of Part 1 of Art. 205⁴, Part 1 of Art. 205⁵, and Part 1 of Art. 239 of the CC (the founding of a religious association whose activities involve violence against citizens or other harm to their health) in Rostov-on-Don. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a high-security penal colony. According to the court, in 2010, Ustyantsev established and headed a branch of Aum Shinrikyo and disseminated the teachings of this organization among the residents of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Volgograd. We cannot assess the lawfulness of the verdict, as we are not aware of the details of this case.

 

The rest of the sentences known to us under Articles 205⁴ and 205⁵ were, as usual, associated with radical Islamism. In November, the 2^nd Western District Military Court sentenced five prisoners of the colony in the Voronezh Region under Parts 1 and 2 of Art. 205⁴, Part 1 of Art. 30, Paragraph A, Part 2 of Art. 205 of the CC (preparation of a terrorist act by carrying out an explosion), Part 1 of Art. 205², Part 1.1 of Art. 205¹ (inducing a person to commit a criminal terrorist act), and Part 1 of Art. 280 of the CC^[31]. According to the investigation, from September to November 2018, the accused showed other convicts videos and images that, according to the expert’s conclusion, promote and justify terrorism. They were planning to commit a terrorist act in Voronezh and attack law enforcement and special service officers after their release. The prisoners were sentenced to terms ranging from six to 24 years in prison.

A 19-year-old resident of Minusink, the Krasnoyarsk region was found guilty under Part 2 of Art. 205², Part 1 of Art. 30, and Part 2 of Art. 205⁵ of the CC. According to the investigation, she posted several comments on social media justifying terrorism and also planned to join ISIS. She was sentenced to 3.5 years in a penal colony.

 

According to the Supreme Court data, in the first half of 2020, articles related to participation in extremist or terrorist groups and continuation of activities of the organizations that have been banned as extremist or terrorist (Articles 282¹, 282², 205⁴, 205⁵), were used in verdicts against 97 people^[32], which means there were about 200 such verdicts in the whole year. We have information about just over a half of these cases: summing up the data from this report and the report on incidents of inappropriate enforcement of anti-extremism legislation^[33], we get the total of 122 convicted in 2020.

Federal List of Extremist Materials

In 2020, the Federal List of Extremist Materials was expanding somewhat slower than in 2010: exactly as a year before, it was updated 26 times but with 139 new entries (193 in 2019). Thus, the total entries grew from 5004 to 5143^[34].

 

New entries fall into the following categories:

• xenophobic materials of contemporary Russian nationalists – 71;
• materials of other nationalists – 8;
• materials of Islamic militants and other calls for violence by political Islamists – 154;
• other Islamic materials – 1;
• materials of Orthodox fundamentalists – 7;
• materials by other peaceful worshippers (the writings of the Pentecostal minister William Branham) – 21;
• materials from Ukrainian media and Internet – 1;
• anti-government materials inciting to riots and violence – 5;
• works by classical fascist and neo-fascist authors – 2;
• parody banned as serious materials – 2;
• peaceful oppositional material – 1;
• radical anti-Christian material – 1;
• anti-Islamic article – 1;
• works of art with aggressive content – 2^[35];
• unidentified materials – 4.

 

The breakdown of this list is roughly the same as in 2019.

 

 

 

 

At least 90 entries out of 139 refer to online content, mostly social networks. This includes video and audio clips, long texts, and images. Offline sources include books and brochures by Russian and other nationalists, classics of Fascism, the Pentecostals, pagan and Muslim authors.

However, often the description of the materials makes their sources indeterminable. For example, entry 5017 is described as “the text of the information material: the article titled The question is not in everyday human hostility... The cult of Devil worship in modern Jewry (begins with the words "The world Jewry is the only population among the cultured peoples of the earth whose secret morality…” and ends with the words “.. For the sake of this moment we live, for the sake of this moment all our deeds are done”). No information is provided on the exact location of the text described in such detail.

In entry 5027, on the contrary, the location is specified to the page: “An image, consisting of two parts, located on p. 153 of the book “Simferopol. Say what you may, but we need the truth!” (popular science publication edited and compiled by А. Shilko. Simferopol, Tverbest, 2016. – 296 pp.), and depicting a man in the uniform of a special combat unit of the Nazi SS troops with the Russian tricolor on his sleeve and on his helmet; first he threatens a peasant with a gun, then the peasant cuts off his head with a saber; the caption reads THE BEAUTY OF A DEBT IS IN ITS PAYMENT “In the morning, moskal [a Russian] said to the peasants, “Hats off!” In the night, his helmet was taken by the partisans together with his head”.”

Not only does entry reproduce the banned material on the website of the Ministry of Justice but also illustrates the problem that has not been solved in all the years of the list’s existence, that is, if an identical image is printed in another book, will it be considered as already banned or will it have to be designated as extremist again? There are no clear instructions for law enforcement regarding this. In practice, we see that from year to year the same materials with different output data or published at different addresses on the Internet are added to the list.

Thus, in 2020, a song by Timur Mutsurayev “Shamil is Leading the Platoon” (the recording begins with words “The houses are burning, volley after volley…” and ends with “…Shamil is leading the platoon home…”), recognized as extremist by the Soviet District Court of Bryansk in September 2020, was added as entry 5142. However, the same song is already on the list: it was already recognized as extremist in February 2014 (entry 2330). The difference between entries 2330 and 5142 is that in the former, the song title is recorded in Latin alphabet (Shamil_vedet_otryad.mp3). But, for those who cannot read Latin letters, entry 2330 contains a clarification that the recording begins with words “The houses are burning, volley after volley…”.

By the end of 2020, there was a total of 264 such duplicate entries in the list.

All the problems with the descriptions in the list, which we repeatedly reported in previous years, were still there in 2020. In this huge register, materials are entered with an endless number of spelling, grammatical, and bibliographic errors.

Also added to the list are materials that are obviously unlawfully recognized as extremist: in 2020, at least 25 such entries were recorded^[36].

 

 

 

As you can see, the replenishment of the list as a whole is slowing down since the General Prosecutor's Office adopted the instruction in 2016 centralizing this process. It is also easy to see what a huge share the materials of Russian nationalists have in this annual replenishment. But it is also true that this share has decreased markedly - from about three quarters in 2016 to about half in 2020.

 

 

The contribution to the list of Ukrainian materials is also rapidly decreasing, as the hot phase of the war is now growing distant, as well as of the radical Islamist materials. Other types of materials do not show such a stable trend, so, their total share has now clearly increased compared to 2016.

The Banning of Organizations as Extremist

In 2020, five organizations were added to the Federal List of Extremist Organizations published on the website of the Ministry of Justice (compared with four in 2019).

From right-wing organizations, Russian Republic of Rus, recognized as extremist by the Moscow City Court on 20 May 2020, joined the list as entry 77. Russian Republic was founded in 2003 and gained notoriety in June 2005, after the announcement sentencing the human rights expert Nikolai Girenko to executing was published on its website; Girenko was shot two weeks later^[37]. Following the conflict between the organization’s leader, Supreme Leader Vladimir Popov (a neo-Nazi well-known in the 90s), and the head of the Executive Committee Viktor Krivov (who started his “career” back in the 80s in Pamyat (Russian for Memory)), Russian Republic of Rus broke away from the organization^[38] and united 22 “communities of the indigenous Russian people.” Members of Russian Republic of Rus appeared as defendants in criminal cases more than once^[39]. Two of the “communities of the indigenous Russian people”, one in Astrakhan and the other in the Shchyolkovsky District of the Moscow region, were previously recognized as extremist and added to the Federal List of Extremist Organizations^[40].

The list also includes the Bashkir nationalist organization Bashkort, which was recognized as extremist by the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan on May 22, 2020. This organization, headed by Fail Alchinov^[41] and Ilnar Galin, is one of the most active organizations of local nationalists. Bashkort has existed since 2014 and, according to its declaration, “carries out various events aimed at protecting the Bashkir language, culture, history, and traditions... protects the constitutional rights of the Bashkir people, their inalienable right to self-determination, and the sovereignty of the republic.” The prosecutor's office demanded banning the organization on the grounds that its "elders" included individuals convicted of extremism: Sagit Ismagilov, Fanzil Akhmetshin, and Ayrat Dilmukhametov. Bashkort claimed that Dilmukhametov was never among its members and that Sagit Ismagilov and Fanzil Akhmetshin were not involved in the management of the organization. According to the other claim of the prosecutor's office, the speeches of the leaders and members of the organization contained slogans "inciting hatred towards'' non-Bashkirs and "representatives of the authorities". In the organization’s materials published on its official page in VKontakte, "statements that bear the signs of calling for the violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and the creation of a single Islamic state” were found^[42].

In October, an entire subculture, AUE (Prisoners’ Criminal Unity) joined the list; it was recognized as extremist by the Supreme Court on 17 August 2020. We consider this decision unlawful, as in this case the anti-extremism legislation was not applied for its intended purpose^[43].

For the same reason, we consider unlawful the banning of the religious group Allya-Ayat (the name varies depending on the transliteration of the Kazakh original: Al Ayat, Allya Ayat, Elleh Ayat, Allah Ayat, Elleh Ayat, and others), recognized as extremist by the Samara Regional Court on 28 May 2019 and added to the list under entry 75. Allya-Ayat was already banned in Kazakhstan and some Russian regions. The adherents of this teaching, founded in the early 1990s by Farhat Abdullayev, preach a cure for all diseases by applying the magazine Selennaya Star to the body, pronouncing a certain “formula of life”, consumption of special tea, and prolonged contemplation of the sun. As a result, several seriously ill residents of the region, who had become followers of Al-Ayat, refused medical help and died^[44].

And finally, in 2020, the charity care home Ak Umut (Bright Hope), recognized as extremist by the Kirovsky District Court of Kazan on 25 September 2014, was added to the list. The Muslim care home was recognized as extremist (in our opinion, without proper grounds) due to the fact that in 2013 and 2014, Islamic books from the Federal List of Extremist Materials were found in its library and classrooms.

In July 2020, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court banned the activities of the far-right Nation and Freedom Committee (Komitet «Natsiya i svoboda», KNS). The Committee was created in September 2014 as part of the Russkiye (“Russians”) association and, after the latter was banned a year later, became one of the main contenders for the legacy of the association. The founder and leader of the KNS is Vladimir Basmanov (Potkin), who has been in exile for a long time^[45]. The KNS systematically opposed the "Russian spring" in eastern Ukraine. According to the prosecutor's office, the reason for the ban was a prosecutor's review, during which “instances of mass distribution of extremist materials, incitement of hostility and hatred towards representatives of various social groups were revealed”^[46]. The Committee was added to the list of extremist organizations in February 2021. Meanwhile, on the basis of the KNS and its ally the Popular Resistance Association (Assotsiatsiya narodnogo soprotivleniya, ANS), a new association – the Movement of Nationalists – was created.

Thus, as of 28 February 2021, the list includes 81 organizations^[47], whose activity is banned by court order and continuation of activity is punishable by Article 282² of the CC (organization of activities of an extremist organization).

 

The list of terrorist organizations published on the website of the FSB was not updated in 2020. But on 6 April 2020, the US State Department declared the Russian ultra-Orthodox pro-monarchist Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) a terrorist organization. This is the first time that the US labels a far-right organization as terrorist. The US also named the leaders, Stanislav Vorobyov, the head of the military-patriotic club Imperial Region and the leader of the Partisan courses Denis Gariev, and the former coordinator of the organization Nikolay Trushchalov “specially designated global terrorists”. The participation of RIM’s members in the war in the Donbass and contacts with the organizers of a series of bombings in the Swedish city of Gothenburg in 2016-2017 attracted the attention of the US authorities^[48]. On 3 February 2021, Canada also labeled RIM as a terrorist organization^[49].

Prosecution for Administrative Offences

 

 

The number of those convicted under administrative “extremism” articles, according to our rather incomplete data, in 2020 remained approximately the same and even decreased slightly. And according to the Supreme Court data, if we extrapolate the numbers for the first half of the year, there was a small increase of about 3%, far less than the 20% increase in 2019.

The data provided below do not include the decisions we deem obviously inappropriate^[50].

 

Article 20.3.1 of the CAO (incitement to national hatred) was introduced after the amendments that introduced the mechanism of administrative prejudice to Part 1 of Article 282 of the CC were passed in 2018^[51]. Article 20.3.1 of the CAO is identical in content with Part 1 of Article 282 of the CC.

According to the SOVA Center’s data, in 2020, 126 rulings were issued citing Art. 20.3.1 of the CAO (in one of them, one person was fined five times; one of those punished was a minor); in 2019, we reported 125 rulings. According to the data of the Supreme Court, in the first half of 2020 alone, 347 persons were convicted^[52].

If we add the numbers of criminal sentences and administrative decisions concerning the incitement of hatred, based on both our data and those of the Supreme Court for the period in question, the figure suggests that the levels of prosecutions citing “incitement of hatred” have decreased, a trend observed since 2018. Although administrative sanctions are, of course, incomparably milder than criminal ones.

According to our data, the majority were punished for xenophobic publications on social networks (primarily on VKontakte but also on Odnoklassniki and Instagram), WhatsApp (in a large group), Telegram, and in Youtube videos. These publications (re-posts) incited hatred against natives of the Caucasus and Central Asia, non-Slavs or non-whites in general, Kyrgyz, Jews, Gypsies, Chinese, Russians, Ukrainians, homosexuals, Orthodox clergymen, Orthodox in general, atheists, Muslims, law enforcement officers and police officers separately, and deputies of the State Duma.

The measures imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic have added certain tension to the administrative enforcement. Among those punished in 2020 were not only those who called for deportations of Chinese nationals in connection with the coronavirus, but also those who called for attacks on “quarantine violators”. For example, in the Penza region, a local resident responded to a VKontakte post about the fines introduced in Penza for quarantine violations with a comment that called for “physical liquidation of violators”, which the prosecutor's office found to be an incitement to social hatred of "a group of people who do not comply with the quarantine requirements". While we condemn any calls for violence, we point out that we do not consider "people who do not comply with quarantine requirements" to be a vulnerable social group that needs protection under the anti-extremism legislation.

The notorious former schema-hegumen Sergius (Romanov) was fined for his sermon held on 25 April^[53]. In addition to anti-Semitic statements, “calls for the eviction of an unspecified circle of people who called for compliance with the self-isolation regime in the context of the spread of coronavirus infection” were also found in the sermon^[54].

“New Generation” Pentecostal pastor Andrey Matyuzhov was fined for his sermon on the greed for money, in which he called for throwing the country's leadership "in the trash" if these people do not repent and also expressed fears that if Russian Christians do not engage in preaching, in a few years “this will be total Tajikistan, Uzbekistan”.

Among the celebrities punished in 2020 was the administrator of the telegram channel and the VKontakte public page "Men's State" (or “Male State”) Vladislav Pozdnyakov^[55], who published there xenophobic statements against “state and local administration, Russians, natives of the Caucasus, Slavs, Russian women, Russian men, Armenians, Christians, homosexuals, security forces, Russian fathers, black children living in Russia, couples of different nationalities … spiritually undeveloped, wordlessly submissive people who submit to someone else's will and allow themselves to be exploited, whose strong habits have formed and developed under the domination of the communist ideology”.

The majority were fined for between 5,000 rubles and 18,000 rubles. Two were sentenced to compulsory labor. Two more were sentenced to administrative arrests. In Tatarstan, the court placed K. Mikhailov, who published on his social media page “statements containing signs... of hostile rejection of Jews and peoples of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Transcaucasia on the basis of ethnicity" under arrest for five days. Bashkir nationalist Ramilya Saitova was arrested in Ufa for 10 days for making a xenophobic video directed against Armenians and posting it on the Internet. The severity of the punishment was due to the fact that that was not the first time this activist was under administrative prosecution.

 

We have information about 158 individuals prosecuted under Article 20.3 of the CAO (propaganda or public display of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols, or paraphernalia or symbols of extremist organizations, or other symbols whose propaganda or public display are banned by federal law) in 2020, including 22 consecutive fines to one person; four of the 158 were minors. In 2019, we reported 153 sentenced under this article. But according to the Supreme Court statistics, in the first half of 2020, Article 20.3 of the CAO was used to impose sanctions in 1052 cases (one against legal entities, two against an official, one against entrepreneurs without legal entities, 1048 against other physical persons).

The majority of those prosecuted under Article 20.3 that we are familiar with posted images of Nazi symbols (mostly swastikas) and runes; in some cases, symbols of such banned organizations as ISIS, Imarat Kavkaz (Caucasus Emirate), and the AUE subculture were posted on social media; the vast majority of the posts were on VKontakte, some were in WhatsApp groups.

38 people were punished for offline offenses. Two of them were prosecuted for hanging flags with swastikas out of the window and on the facades of residential buildings, one for a swastika graffiti on the wall, and one for selling “wall decorations with Nazi symbols”. In a Kazan restaurant, a man was spotted by law enforcement officers wearing a hoodie with the Kolovrat, a symbol banned because of its semblance to the swastika (on the Federal list of extremist materials, entry 947)^[56].

The number of inmates prosecuted for displaying their Nazi tattoos has decreased somewhat. In 2020, we are aware of 27 such cases, compared with 29 in 2019. The most famous of these prisoners was Nikolai Korolev, who is serving a life sentence for organizing a series of bombings, including at the Cherkizovsky market in Moscow, and for the racist murder of North Korean citizen Lee Ji-wei. One prisoner drew a swastika on the wall of his cell.

Five other people displayed their tattoos in public, outside of prison (in the streets, city squares, etc.). And one football fan was so passionately cheering during a football match between FC Lokomotiv and FC Dynamo that he stripped to the waist, displaying the swastika tattoos on his shoulders for everyone around him to see.

The majority of the offenders under Article 20.3 were fined for between 1,000 rubles and 3,000 rubles. At least eight people were sentenced to administrative arrests of between three and 15 days.

At least one of the detentions under Art. 20.3 was inexplicably harsh: the video coverage of the detention of a Krasnoyarsk resident, born in 1982, shows several security forces fighters break into his apartment, lay the detainee face down on the floor, and put him in handcuffs. We would like to think that the rough detention is justified and the young man was suspected of a violation more serious than publishing certain images with prohibited symbols on social media, but no other, serious suspicions are revealed in the report^[57].

 

We are aware of 162 persons prosecuted under Article 20.29 of the CAO (production and dissemination of extremist materials), two of them minors. In 2019, we reported 198 persons.

According to the Supreme Court statistics, in the first half of 2020, Article 20.29 of the CAO was used to impose 856 sanctions (one against legal entities, six against officials, 849 – against other physical persons).

Most of the offenders paid moderate fines between 1,000 and 3,000 rubles. At least three were placed under administrative arrests. In the majority of the cases, the content of offences was nationalists’ materials published on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Instagram, including songs by groups popular among the neo-Nazis (Kolovrat, Russky Styag (“Russian Flag”), Bandy Moskvy (“Bands of Moscow”), Grot (“Grotto”), and 25/17); the Neo-pagan film “Games of the Gods”, a leaflet titled “Prince, look at the scum that has infested the Kremlin!”, as well as Chechen-separatist or radical-Islamist materials, for example, songs by the singer-songwriter of the armed Chechen resistance Timur Mutsurayev and the videos titled “Shamil Basayev: the truth about Beslan” and “We are Mujahedeen, the army of Allah”.

Some were prosecuted for distributing extremist materials offline, for instance, for sending to a penal colony of certain “books with religious content for the prayer room”: two of those were on the Federal List of Extremist Materials.

 

At least 16 people were charged under combined Articles 20.3 and 20.29 of the CAO in 2020. All of them were fined.

We have covered the decisions that we consider more or less lawful. At the same time, we are aware of at least 10 instances of inappropriate penalties under Art. 20.3.1 of the CAO, 38 under Art. 20.3 of the CAO, and 55 instances (two of them against legal entities) under Art. 20.29 of the CAO. Thus, for 446 lawful and appropriate rulings (including those we are unable to assess) there are 103 inappropriate ones, and the share of the latter (about 23%) has increased again in comparison with the previous year (in 2019, we recorded 99 inappropriate rulings and 476 appropriate, or about 20%).

 

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