Press Release, 22.09.2023

Photo: Screenshot of Emilia Slabunova’s page on the VKontakte social media running that her page was blocked by the demand of the Office of the Public Prosecutor General of the RF No 27-31-2022 of 25.03.2022

A judge of the Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg ruled out that the VKontakte social media administration was not obliged to open access to Yabloko MP of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia  Emilia Slabunova to her blocked page on this social media, even after the user had deleted the posts allegedly containing “unreliable” socially significant information about the special operation on the territory of Ukraine. The politician intends to appeal the decision, despite the position of the Smolninsky District Court.

It should be noted that in March 2022, the page of the deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia from Yabloko, Emilia Slabunova, was blocked on VKontakte by decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office, without any warnings from the administration of the social network, the Public Prosecutor’s office or the Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications (Roskomnadzor).

Roskomnadzor and the Public Prosecutor’s Office refused to provide Slabunova with information about which materials contained “unreliable socially significant information about the course of a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine” leading to blocking the deputy’s page on VKontakte. In addition, Roskomnadzor did not remove the block from the page after Slabunova had removed all materials that could be regarded as unreliable and sent a corresponding notification about this. The deputy appealed to the Petrozavodsk City Court with a complaint about the inaction of Roskomnadzor.

During the trial with Roskomnadzor, it became clear which posts, in the opinion of the control body, contained “inaccurate information”. The first publication was the official data on the death of the first serviceman from Karelia with a quote from President Putin. The second was a repost of an interview with the Executive Secretary of the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers’ Committees, Valentina Melnikova. These posts were also deleted by Slabunova. However, the politician’s account was not unblocked. In accordance with the position of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office and the Roskomnadzor, the court refused Slabunova to recognise the position of Roskomnadzor and inaction and found that measures to restrict access to her page “were taken by the administration of the social network VKontakte”. After this Slabonova filed a claim against VKontakte in the Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg, at the place of registration of the legal entity of the social media, for the obligation of the social media to lift the restriction on her access to the page.

On 29 May, the Smolninsky District Court decided to reject the claim. Slabunova had to wait for the reasoning part of the decision for a long time and only received it in September after a complaint to the Chairman of the court. The court found that the social media was not obliged to remove the block from Slabunova’s page even after deleting the controversial posts. Emilia Slabunova intends to appeal the decision in the City Court of St. Petersburg.

MP Slabunova notes that the situation with the slow movement of documents through the courts also occurs within the framework of her another case – the administrative case about “discrediting the army”. Slabunova was fined 30,000 roubles on 2 February, 2023 for calling at a meeting of the Karelian Legislative Assembly to spend money on children’s education rather than on military operations. On 6 March, the Supreme Court of Karelia confirmed the decision of the Petrozavodsk City Court, after which the politician appealed to the Third Court of Cassation in St. Petersburg. On 23 May, the judge requested the case materials in Petrozavodsk. According to Emilia Slabunova’s defender, Alexander Kobrinsky, the transfer of materials between courts usually takes no more than three weeks. However, in the case of “discrediting the army” by a deputy from Yabloko, the transfer of the case file took almost four months.

It should be noted that from the beginning of the special operation, the Public Prosecutor General’s Office issued decision of blocking eight pages of Yabloko members on the social media VKontakte: the pages of deputies of Legislative Assemblies Boris Vishnevsky (St. Petersburg) and Emilia Slabunova (Karelia), leaders of regional branches of Yabloko Lev Shlosberg (the Pskov region), Anna Cherepanova (the Novgorod region) and Ruslan Zinatullin (Tatarstan), as well as pages of Yabloko members Zhanna Shlosberg (the Pskov region), Alexei Manannikov (the Novosibirsk region), and Zufar Garipov (Tatarstan) were blocked. In addition, the website of the Altai regional branch of Yabloko was blocked.

EMILIA SLABUNOVA

is member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, Chair of Yabloko in 2015-2019.

Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia.

Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Honoured Teacher of Russia