April 1
On April 1st, arrests of anti-war protestors continued.
In Moscow, police officers roughed up Ivan Drobotov, a participant in anti-war protests, while arresting him. At the exit to the metro station “Oktyabrskoe Pole” a police officer approached him to confirm his identity. After hearing his last name , two plain clothes officers tried to detain him. The officers injured Drobotov during the arrest after which he tried to run. Drobotov reported that they put a bag over his head. In the end, he was cited for disobeying police orders. In the citation, police stated that he “harassed citizens and behaved defiantly.” Drobotov was later sentenced to jail for 10 days for failure to obey the police.
In Moscow, police detained Artem Medvedev for tearing the letter Z off of the glass at a trolleybus stop. The writing on his backpack that read “No to war” also caught the officers’ attention.
In Moscow, police detained Artem Korneev who allegedly hung up anti-war posters. The officers came to his apartment and tried to get inside. Korneev tried to explain to them that he did not have the right to let them in since the apartment belonged to his girlfriend and not to him. The police answered “I don’t f***ing care, I can just break it [the door] down.” They eventually detained him when he exited into the hallway.
In Krasnodar, Alexander Aposhnyanskii, who had previously been beaten by police during an anti-war protest, was arrested. Aposhnyanskii thinks that the police took issue with the “Nemtsov bridge” pin that he was wearing on his jacket. According to Aposhnyanskii, the police had to, on the spot, come up with a reason to arrest him and managed to find two unpaid traffic tickets.
In Novosibirsk, an activist was fined 35,000 rubles for holding a poster reading “Putin stop the war.” During his court hearing the judge asked him: “Why, over the last 8 years, did you not go out to protest with posters that said ‘Poroshenko stop the war’ and ‘Zelensky stop the war’?”
In the Ural region, the publishers of local newspapers in the BK media group (“Vechernii Krasnoturinsk,” “Vechernii Karpinsk” “Pro Severouralsk” and “Globus”) were fined 1.5 million rubles for publishing an anti-war front page reading “This madness must be stopped!”
In Moscow, the court sentenced Dzhavid Mamedov, a “Socialist Alternative” supporter, to 30 days in jail for discrediting the Russian military. He was convicted of a second violation of the “protest laws” for posting a Instagram story from someone with the username “rrazdorr.” In the Instagram story there was an announcement about an anti-war protest on March 6th with text reading “Silence is war.”
In Kirov, a church deacon was indicted for distributing false information about the Russian military in a post on VKontakte. According to the investigation, in the post he expressed support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian army. In particular, he said that the Ukrainian military “sent 17,500 orks to their resting places.” He also called the Russian military “Russian occupiers.”
In Penza, law enforcement opened a criminal case against 55 year old English language teacher Irina Gen, who condemned the war in Ukraine. She has now been indicted for distributing “fakes” about the Russian military. The basis for the case was a denunciation made by 8th graders.
In the Chelyabinsk region, a criminal case was opened against a local resident for spreading false information about the Russian military based on a post about the shelling of Mariupol.
The Novosibirsk opera theater canceled the performance of opera singer Anna Netrebko because she had condemned the Russian war in Ukraine. Her performance was scheduled for June 2nd.
In Astrakhan’s School 59, math teacher Elena Baibekova was fired. On February 22nd, she had done a single-person anti-war protest. The school’s administration said that one of the students complained about political conversations during Baibekova’s class. The teacher insisted that she had never had any conversations about politics with her students.
On a request from the Prosecutor General, the Russian Federal Communications Agency (Roskomnadzor) blocked the website of the oldest newspaper in Komi “Krasnoe Znamya” and the publication “Spektra.” The specific reasons they were blocked are still unknown. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine the agency has blocked the websites of dozens of Russian publications.