Press Release, 20.02.2023

Photo: Yelena Osipova at the opening of her exhibition in the St. Petersburg Yabloko on 31 January, 2023 / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The St. Petersburg police refused to open a criminal case against a telephone terrorist who reported about “a bomb threat” in the office of the Yabloko party in St. Petersburg at Shpalernaya 13. The police even failed to identify a person who had made the false call about mining. This is reported by the investigator on the refusal to institute a criminal case.

It follows from the document that a call to the police that there was an explosive device in the office of the party was made by a certain person on 1 February. On passing by, he heard a snippet of a conversation between two men, one of whom told the other that “… an exhibition is being held in the office of the party and it will soon explode…”. It was this statement that became the reason for the visit of the police to the Yabloko office.

The document runs that the police were able to establish the telephone number from which the call was made, but failed to find out whom it belonged to.

“It follows from the message of an unidentified person, that he reported a conversation he heard in the street. No information was found that this person had any relation to the premises of the St. Petersburg regional branch of the political party “The Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko”, or the exhibition “Peaceful Art Protest” by Yelena Osipova. The motives that prompted the person to apply to the law enforcement have not been established,” the document runs.

On Monday, 20 February, Andrei Chertkov, a lawyer representing the interests of Yabloko, filed a complaint with Public Prosecutor of the Central District of St.Petersburg against the actions of police officers.

On Wednesday, 1 February, police officers came to the Yabloko office, cordoned off the premises and said that they had received a call about an alleged bomb threat. Police officers did not find any explosive objects in the office, but they seized 19 Yelena Osipova’s artworks, which she provided to Yabloko for an exhibition which opened on 31 January.  According to the police report, the paintings were confiscated because they “possibly contained deliberately false information, 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”. The Yabloko office was blocked for five hours, police did not allow Yabloko activists to return to their working places and prepare documents for the candidates nominated by Yabloko in the by-elections of municipal deputies for submission to the electoral commissions.

The head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, Alexander Shishlov, sent inquiries to the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Roman Plugin, and the St.Petersburg Public Prosecutor, Viktor Melnik. Shishlov demanded that the police return paintings of the artist and civil activist Yelena Osipova, that were illegally confiscated from the office of the Yabloko party, take under control due consideration of the applications made by Andrei Chertkov, Yabloko’s lawyer, and initiate a criminal case for a knowingly false report of a bomb in the Yabloko office.