Press Release, 25.01.2023

Photo by the Press Service of the Legislative Assembly of St.Petersburg

The parliamentary majority of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg excluded from the agenda the draft federal initiative of the Yabloko faction envisaging criminal penalties for propaganda of nuclear war. This happened at the plenary meeting on Wednesday, 25 January. 35 out of 46 deputies present in the parliament voted to exclude the bill from the agenda.

The draft was submitted to Parliament in December 2022. It is proposed to supplement the Criminal Code with a new Article 354.2 and to punish public calls by persons holding public office or the media to use nuclear weapons or promulgating its use by imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to 1 million roubles. For citizens, the responsibility is a fine of 100,000 – 300,000 roubles, or imprisonment for up to three years.

Today, calls to use nuclear weapons are heard in Russia not only from marginal politicians like Yevgeny Fedorov, the founder of the National Liberation Movement and a State Duma deputy, who threatened to launch a nuclear missile at the US state of Nevada a year ago. Such extremely dangerous rhetoric is used by many state officials, including Dmitry Medvedev, Chairman of the United Russia party, Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, Vyacheslav Volodin, the Speaker of the State Duma, and even the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill. The popular TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov has repeatedly stated this over the past year, and only the day before yesterday he campaigned for the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine.

“Statements and threats to use nuclear weapons do not bring peace closer. The idea of the admissibility of a nuclear war, which could be the end of human civilisation, is being introduced into the mass consciousness. It becomes like genuine madness,” Alexander Shishlov, head of the Yabloko faction in the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly, noted.

According to Boris Vishnevsky, deputy head of the Yabloko faction, a huge number of Russian citizens listen to these arguments every day. They are being taught that a nuclear war is possible, because victory must be achieved, and the price does not matter,

“60 years ago the world faced the threat of nuclear war. But the world managed to refrain from it then. Also because the then leaders of the states saw the [Second World] war with their own eyes. And today, calls for the use of nuclear weapons or the permissibility of this are made by those who have never personally participated in hostilities, and, with rare exceptions, did not even serve in the army. But, apparently, they did not play tin soldiers in their childhood enough. And instead of “never again,” they dream of “we can repeat it,” Vishnevsky said.

Calls for nuclear war must be banned, deputies of the Yabloko faction say. Earlier, members of the Yabloko factions in the regional parliaments of Pskov and Karelia submitted similar bills for consideration of their parliments.

The Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party made a statement on the need to stop state propaganda of hatred and aggression in Russia, and introduce a legislative ban on nuclear war propaganda.