Press Release, 10.01.2023

Photo: A screenshot of Boris Vishnevsky’s blocked page on the Vkontakte social media, an inscription runs “The  material is blocked on the territory of the Russian Federation by the demand of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation No 27-31-2022/Treb622-22 of 20.05.2022

The Public Prosecutor General’s Office failed to send its legal representative to the trial on the lawsuit of Boris Vishnevsky for the second time. Since the summer, Boris Vishhnevsky, a member of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg from the Yabloko faction, has been trying to find out why the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) blocked his page on the Vkontakte social media at the request of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office.

A representative of Roskomnadzor was supposed to explain at the meeting in the Vasileostrovskiy District Court on Tuesday, 10 January, via video link on exactly what grounds Vishnevsky’s page was blocked. Lawyer Andrei Chertkov who was defending Vishnevsky said in court that he did not consider it possible to hold a meeting in the absence of the defendant – a representative of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office. The Public Prosecutor’s Office did not send its official representative to the previous hearing a month ago.

“When a representative of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office either twice or thrice ignores summons to court and does not consider it possible to state his position on an administrative case on a lawsuit initiated by a person who is well-known in our city – Deputy of the Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky, –  then we can raise the question of either a conscious disrespect for our judicial system, or about some kind of crisis within the Public Prosecutor General’s Office. Maybe they need to increase the staff?” Andrei Chertkov said.

Vishnevsky noted that the Public Prosecutor General’s Office was the initiator of blocking his page. However, the deputy cannot receive this demand of the public prosecutors so far.

“The Public Prosecutor General’s Office answers: you were blocked at the request of Roskomnadzor, and Roskomnadzor answers that you were blocked at the request of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office. Why didn’t their representative come? Maybe he really had nothing to say,” Boris Vishnevsky said.

At the past meeting, Roskomnadzor provided the court the reasons for the blocking. The agency claimed that the information on the politician’s page included posts about “general mobilisation” and “possible use of nuclear weapons,” which created “panic moods” among people and even created the preconditions for “massive violations of public order”. However, if one visit the politician’s page through a VPN, then one can not find a single post on these topics there.

The next hearing is scheduled for Monday, 13 February.

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko Party, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and Bureau, and an MP of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg