Maxim Kruglov’s blog post, 18.04.2023

Photo: Maxim Kruglov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Maxim Loktev, the Chief Military Enlistment Officer of Moscow, openly stated that the Moscow video surveillance system had been actively used to determine the places of residence of conscripts, who were certainly, very much needed at present. In general, they began to talk about the true functionality of this famous system obscenely openly and directly. Although let me remind you, it was launched under the pretext of fighting crime.

But, for example, when my assistant Slava Pinchuk was beaten for his civic activism, and the attackers fell into the lenses of this miracle system, for some reason it turned out to be not very effective – for some reason, the identities of the criminals have never been identified.

But it effectively serves to catch demonstrators and now recruits.

We have been waring for a long time that this will be the case. That digital technologies, and this system in particular, have finally come to the service of the Big Brother represented by our authoritarian and repressive state. For the service of a “Comrade Major” and a “Comrade Military Enlistment Officer”.

The Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma held a round table on this topic. Also we proposed among our amendments when considering (let’s call it like that) the budget of Moscow for 2023 to redistribute the expenditures on video surveillance over Muscovites (which, by the way, have some signs of corruption) in favour of medicine and education.

MAXIM KRUGLOV

is a member of the Federal Bureau of the Yabloko Party,

Deputy Chairman of the Moscow branch of Yabloko.

Head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma. Candidate of Political Sciences.