Press Release, 06.02.2023

Photo: Yelena Osipova at the opening of her exhibition in the St. Petersburg Yabloko on 31 January, 2023 / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, Alexander Shishlov, sent inquiries to the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Roman Plugin, and the St.Petersburg Public Prosecutor, Viktor Melnik. Shishlov demands that the police return paintings of the artist and civil activist Yelena Osipova, that were illegally confiscated from the office of the Yabloko party, take under control due consideration of the applications made by Andrei Chertkov, the lawyer representing the St.Petersburg branch of Yabloko, and initiate a criminal case for a knowingly false report of a bomb in the Yabloko office.

It should be noted that on 1 February, police officers came to the Yabloko office, cordoned off the premises and said that they had received a call about an alleged bomb threat. Police officers did not find any explosive objects in the office, but they seized 19 Yelena Osipova’s artworks, which she provided to Yabloko for an exhibition which opened on 31 January.  The Yabloko office was blocked for five hours, police did not allow Yabloko activists to return to their working places and prepare documents for the candidates nominated by Yabloko in the by-elections of municipal deputies for submission to the electoral commissions.

According to the police protocol, the paintings were confiscated because they “possibly contained deliberately false information, data on the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens”. At the same time, when police officers were asked by a member of the Yabloko party, Olga Pokrovskaya, about what exactly the “deliberately false information contained in the works” was, they replied that they were not experts on this issue and could not answer.

“I believe that the police officers, who were not specialists in art history or linguistics, could not assess the content of the paintings and did not have the legal right to seize them. This would be possible only if they received a message about commission of a crime, and not if the investigator somehow did not like the paintings. In fact, the police were involved in a provocation organised by unidentified persons and aimed at disrupting the exhibition of Yelena Osipova, as well as preventing participation of Yabloko in the by-elections to municipal councils,” Alexander Shishlov said.

A detailed complaint against the actions of the police officers was filed with the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Central District and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Central District of St.Petersburg by lawyer Andrei Chertkov, representing the interests of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko.

Alexander Shishlov asks in the letter to the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take control of the consideration of the lawyer’s complaint, return the paintings, and also conduct a check of the actions of the police officers who seized them. A similar letter was sent to the Public Prosecutor of St. Petersburg. In addition, Alexander Shishlov also asked the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to initiate a criminal case under Article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the fact of a knowingly false report of an act of terrorism.

A peacemaking exhibition by well-known St. Petersburg artist and activist Yelena Osipova opened at the Yabloko office on Tuesday, 31 January. It was planned that Osipova’s paintings would be on display until 24 February. However, the very next day, the police confiscated the artworks from the Yabloko office.

ALEXANDER SHISHLOV

is head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, and Chairman of the Yabloko branch in St.Petersburg