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In Kostroma, a court fined eco-activist and State Duma candidate from Yabloko, Andrei Tarasov, 1,000 roubles (about US$11) for a T-shirt that read: “I am against the party of crooks and thieves.” The court deemed the image on the shirt to be extremist symbolism and punished the politician under Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code. This was reported by 7×7 magazine, citing Tarasov himself.
The T-shirt also featured a bear being kicked by a person in addition to the slogan. The expert from the Ministry of Internal Affairs associated the slogan and image with Alexei Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Foundation. According to her, the slogan became part of the foundation’s political programme, and its use marks someone as an opposition supporter and is linked to “visual markers” of Navalny’s structures.
“At the same time, the phrase itself appears nowhere in any registers, it has not been recognised as extremist. The prosecution’s argument was simply fabricated—supposedly, representatives of banned extremist organisations once used this phrase or something similar somewhere. But by the same logic, you could ban the Russian alphabet, since all extremists and terrorists use letters,” wrote Tarasov on his VKontakte page.
Tarasov himself believes that the fine is part of ongoing pressure following the elections. He noted that he ran for the State Duma with Yabloko on the platform “For peace and freedom, for a life without fear,” and finished third, ahead of candidates from other major parties.