Press Release, 7.03.2023

Photo by Oleg Kharaeyev, Kommersant

The faction of the Yabloko party in the Moscow City Duma, exercising the right of regional parliaments to initiate bills in the State Duma, submitted to the Moscow city parliament a draft resolution for the State Duma “On declaring an amnesty”. The draft envisages termination of criminal cases under the following articles of the Criminal Code of Russia: No 207.3 (“fakes about the army”), No 280.3 (“discrediting the army”), and No 284.2 (“calls for sanctions against Russia”).

The amnesty will release those accused under these articles from pre-trial detention centres, and relieve those who were already convicted from serving their punishment and remove their criminal records. The amnesty will also cover those who got non-custodial sentences, those on probation, persons whose sentences have been suspended, and those on parole.

If the Moscow City Duma approves the resolution, and the State Duma accepts it, politician Ilya Yashin, municipal deputy Alexei Gorinov, artist Alexandra Skochilenko, Abakan journalist and Yabloko member Mikhail Afanasyev and many others will be released. One of the charges against journalist and public figure Vladimir Kara-Murza will be also dropped.

On 4 March, 2022, a few days after the start of the “special operation”, new articles were introduced to the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses, which effectively prohibit Russian citizens from expressing an opinion differing from that of the state on the conduct of hostilities on the territory of Ukraine.

“Certainly, from the point of view of law, it is impossible to seriously say that those accused under articles on military censorship have committed some crimes, but amnesty is now one of the few real tools for the release of these people. We really hope that mercy will be above political differences, and our colleagues in the Moscow City Duma, and later the State Duma deputies, will support the amnesty bill,” head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma Maxim Kruglov said.

Kruglov also urged Muscovites to join the public campaign in support of the amnesty and send appeals to the deputies they voted for in the Moscow City Duma asking them to vote for the Yabloko bill. This can be done through the Internet reception on the website of the Moscow City Parliament.

According to the independent human rights media project OVD-Info, since the beginning of March 2022, 459 people in Russia have been prosecuted under criminal charges for publicly expressed attitude towards what the state calls a “special operation”.

Among those prosecuted under criminal articles on military censorship of the criminal code are three members of the Yabloko party: Anatoly Nogovitsyn, leader of the Yakutsk branch of Yabloko (Article 280.3, Part 1, of the Criminal Code); Vladimir Yefimov, journalist and Chairman of the Kamchatka branch of Yabloko (Article 280.3, Part 1, of the Criminal Code); and Mikhail Afanasyev, Editor of the Novy Focus online media in Khakassia (Article 207.3, Part 2, Clause “a”, of the Criminal Code).