Press Release, 9.03.2023

Photo: The exhibition / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Central District of St. Petersburg canceled the decision of the investigator of the district department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs which refused to initiate a criminal case on a false report about mining of the office of the Yabloko party. This follows from the response of the deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Central District to the appeal of lawyer Andrei Chertkov, who represents the interests of the party.

On Wednesday, 1 February, the police came to the office of Yabloko. They ordered everyone to leave the premises of the party office under a pretext that they had received a report about a bomb in the building. They did not find any explosive devices, but seized paintings and posters about peace by the artist Yelena Osipova, which were exhibited in the office. According to the police report, the paintings were confiscated because they “possibly contained deliberately false information and 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”.

Alexander Shishlov, head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, sent appeals to Roman Plugin, head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, and Viktor Melnik, the Public Prosecutor of St.Petersburg. Shishlov demanded that Osipova’s paintings, illegally confiscated from the Yabloko office, be returned, and that Public Prosecutor takes under control consideration of the applications of the lawyer Andrei Chertkov, representing the St.Petersburg branch of Yabloko and that a criminal case on the false report about mining of the office be opened.

Initially the investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to open a criminal case, as he could not identify the person who made the false call about mining, but was able to find out the telephone number from which they called. Yabloko’s lawyer Chertkov, in response to this, filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. From the response of the police it follows that he was denied satisfaction of the complaint due to the fact that the decision to refuse to initiate proceedings was canceled by the Public Prosecutor’s office.

“The grounding for the refusal to initiate a case due to the fact that the investigator did not know who the criminal was and where he was represents a new word in jurisprudence, which was not envisaged by law before. According to this logic, it would be much easier for the law enforcement to work, but the law requires otherwise: to look for a criminal, and not to refer to the fact that he is unidentified,” Boris Vishnevsky, Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party and an MP of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, comments.