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In Moscow, Dmitry Kisiev, an activist and former head of Boris Nadezhdin’s campaign headquarters, was detained outside the State Duma during a one-person protest against fines for searching for extremist materials online. Nadezhdin shared this information on his Telegram channel.
Kisiev held a placard reading: “For a Russia without censorship. Orwell wrote a dystopia, not a manual.”
Nadezhdin and Kisiev arrived at the Duma building at about 9 a.m. Within minutes, police officers approached to check their documents, and around 10 more security personnel also appeared. The officers inspected their backpacks as well.
Earlier, Kisiev had tried to get permission from the city authorities to hold a protest outside the Duma with up to 10 people, but the authorities refused.
At the beginning of July, Kisiev was stripped of Russian citizenship based on an FSB report, which framed his actions as a threat to national security. The activist, who is originally from Crimea, received Russian citizenship in 2014.
Today, the State Duma is set to consider in a third reading a draft law that introduces fines for searching for extremist materials online, advertising VPNs, passing a SIM card or an online account to another person, and other new offences in the Administrative Code.
The draft law originally only addressed expediter activities. It sat in the Duma with no movement for half a year, and then amendments were proposed to cover entirely different matters.
The initiative was criticised by Ekaterina Mizulina, head of the “Safe Internet League,” and Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of the state-owned RT propaganda channel. Both expressed displeasure that the amendment on fines for searching for extremist materials could get in the way of them filing official police reports (“denunciations”).
09:59 RusNews correspondents Yulia Petrova and Konstantin Zharov, who were filming Kisiev’s protest, were also detained outside the State Duma, the outlet reports.
12:27 Kommersant journalist Bozhena Ivanova, who was covering the protest, was also among those detained, the newspaper reported.
All detainees were taken to Tverskoy police station. Police are preparing reports on the RusNews correspondents for violating rules on holding a public event (Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code).
Note: Yulia Petrova and Konstantin Zharov were released on a written pledge to appear, which specified the article for the offence. However, the formal administrative report was only filed today, according to RusNews. A previous version of this report stated that their reports had already been filed. We apologise for the inaccuracy.
13:04 RusNews journalists Yulia Petrova and Konstantin Zharov have been released from the police station on a pledge to appear, RusNews reports.
Reports have been drawn up against them under the article on violating the rules for participants of a public event (Part 5 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code).
15:15 A female lawyer who arrived to provide legal assistance to Kisiev and Petrova was detained at Tverskoy police station, reports Kisiev’s “Candidates’ Headquarters” project.
A report was drawn up against her for disobeying police orders (Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code). She was placed in a holding cell. According to RusNews, the detainee is accused of filming illegally inside the police station.
“This is a gross violation of the law on legal practice: not only was she barred from seeing her clients, but they are impeding her professional activity as well,” notes the Candidates’ Headquarters.
Other lawyers arrived at the station to represent their detained colleague. One of them told OVD-Info that at first they were denied entry, but eventually one was able to go inside.
A report was also drawn up against Kisiev for violating the rules for participants of a public event (Part 5 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code).
16:35 Dmitry Kisiev and Bozhena Ivanova are being brought to Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court. Both have had reports prepared against them for violating the rules for participants of a public event. This was reported on Boris Nadezhdin’s Telegram channel.
“The so-called ‘violation’ consists in the ‘mass participation’ of what was actually a one-person protest. Several journalists were detained to make it ‘mass participation.’ Showing press cards didn’t help,” the Telegram channel says.
According to RusNews, the lawyer was released from the police station without a report being filed.
18:52 The Tverskoy District Court in Moscow has postponed the hearings on the cases of Dmitry Kisiev and journalist Bozhena Ivanova, SotaVision reports.
The hearing has been rescheduled for 25 July. Kisiev and Ivanova were released so they could find lawyers and review the case files.