Press Release 6.02.2024

Photo: MP Gurulyov, a screenshot of the programme “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov”

On 5 February, the Izmailovsky Court of Moscow refused to recognise as illegal the inaction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which did not find extremism in the calls of State Duma deputy, General Andrei Gurulyov about the “rotten” 20 per cent of population who disagree with Putin and, therefore, must be destroyed.  The appeal to the Ministry of Internal Affairs was sent by Boris Vishnevsky, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Deputy Chair of the Yabloko party. The court’s decision will be appealed.

It should be noted that MP Gurulyov said that President Putin was supported by 80 per cent of the population, and as for the rest, “all this remaining rot must be, if not isolated, then at least somehow destroyed”.

Boris Vishnevsky appealed to the Public Prosecutor General’s Office, demanding that a criminal case be opened against Gurulyov for his “misanthropic” statements and calls. The Public Prosecutor General’s Office transferred the materials to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which “did not find extremism,” but did not present any inspection results justifying this conclusion.

Vishnevsky appealed the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ refusal in court, where the ministry had to submit inspection materials, including a certificate of “linguistic research” of the deputy’s statements, carried out at the Expert Forensic Centre of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow by expert O. Vanina.

According to the results of this study, Gurulyov’s statements contain no signs of inciting hostility and hatred, no negative assessment of a group of people on political or other grounds, no threats or calls for violent action.

One had to try very hard and close one’s eyes very wide so as not to see all this, so the Ministry of Internal Affairs tried their best, Boris Vishnevsky writes.

Vishnevsky analyses the court decision as follows:

[According to the Ministry,] it turns out that the call to “destroy” is not a call to violence at all, and not a threat. It is simply “a figure of speech” (the audit materials cite the conclusion of the State Duma Commission on Deputy Ethics, where Gurulyov’s statements were assessed in exactly this way).

If someone used such “figures of speech” in relation not to the President’s opponents, but to his supporters, guess how many minutes later there would be a criminal case, arrest, trial and pre-trial detention centre? And what would be the results of a “linguistic expertise”?

But when they need it – for example, in the Alexandra Skochilenko case [of seven years in a penal colony for replacing tags in a supermarket by leaflets calling for peace] – experts immediately find everything the investigation needs, including inciting political enmity and hatred.

Lawyer Andrei Chertkov submitted an application to the Izmailovo District Court [in Moscow] on my behalf by. I was represented in court by lawyers Mikhail Biryukov and Tatyana Solomina. Certainly, the court’s decision will be appealed.