The Kirovsky District Court of Yekaterinburg fined the publication Vechernie Vedomosti 245 thousand rubles under the article on “discrediting” the Russian army (Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code). The publication itself reports this.
The reason was 15 publications about anti-war protests from February 24 to 26 last year, for which the publication was already fined last year. They were published, as noted, before the law on “discrediting” the Russian army came into force.
“There was no opinion in these publications, there were no calls from the editors themselves – there were only facts. Let’s say how people came to the square, chanted something, showed pacifist posters,” said lawyer Georgy Krasnov , representing the interests of the publication in court.
On September 1, it became known that the police had drawn up two more reports under the article of “discredit.” The defendants are editor-in-chief Vladislav Postnikov and director of the founding organization Guzel Aitkulova. The consideration of these two protocols is scheduled for October 5.
The reason for the case against director Guzel Aitkulova was publications for March 2-3, 2022. These publications, as the publication writes, talked about the protest actions that took place in Yekaterinburg in those days, they contained fragments of video broadcasts from a peaceful march and photographs of administrative protocols drawn up by the police.
At the beginning of July 2022, the founder of the newspaper “Evening Vedomosti” Tekhnotorg LLC was fined 150 thousand rubles under the article of “discredit” for photos of stickers “GruZ200” and “Pizdets”, which were posted around Yekaterinburg by the artist Leonid Cherny. The photographs were included in a post on the publication’s Telegram channel. It talked about the arrest of a street artist. At the end of June, Tekhnotorg was fined 200 thousand rubles for publications about the protests in February 2022. At the end of July, the editor-in-chief of the publication, Postnikov, was fined 100 thousand rubles under the same article about “discrediting” the Russian army.
