Press Release, 26.01.2023

Photo by the Press Service of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia

The parliamentary pro-government majority of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia rejected the draft federal initiative of the Yabloko faction envisaging criminal penalties for propaganda of nuclear war. The meeting of the Karelian Legislative Assembly was held on 26 January.

It should be noted that just like the Yabloko MPs in the parliaments of St.Petersburg and the Pskov Region, Yabloko parliamentarians in the Legislative Assembly of Karelia – Emilia Slabunova and Irina Buguchevskaya –  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.

In her speech, MP Emilia Slabunova noted that the propaganda of the use of nuclear weapons is not only prohibited by a number of international regulatory documents, but is also destructive from the point of view of universal human values and the main value – human life. The increasing calls to use nuclear weapons create dangerous socio-psychological conditions for getting used to the very idea that they can solve some political or other problems, and will not cause irreparable harm to humanity and the planet.

The discussion of the Yabloko bill in the Karelian parliament was preceded by a message that the Committee on Law and Order of the Parliament did not recommend the adoption of the Yabloko bill.

The initiative was opposed by two deputies, including United Russia Party member Leonid Liminchuk, who had previously written a denunciation against Emilia Slabunova, MP and a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, of her allegedly “discrediting the army”. Liminchuk said that “an organsed group of Yabloko activists is engaged in political sabotage” by proposing to ban the propaganda of the destruction of mankind with nuclear weapons. We need to “watch the hands of the Yabloko people” who “offer us to shut up,” said Liminchuk, who two months ago saw the “discrediting of the armed forces” in Emilia Slabunova’s suggestion that taxpayers’ money should be spent not on conducting different special operations, but on building schools.

The bill of the Yabloko faction on criminal liability for propaganda of the use of nuclear weapons was rejected by a majority of votes of pro-government deputies of the Parliament of the Republic of Karelia.

On 25 January, the pro-government parliamentary majority of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg excluded a similar bill by Yabloko deputies Alexander Shishlov and Boris Vishnevsky from the agenda of the St.Petersburg parliament.

The date of consideration of a similar Yabloko’s bill in the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies has not been announced yet.

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.