Press Release, 19.06.2024

Photo: Vasily Neustroyev/ Photo from social media

Yabloko has announced the collection of guarantees for our colleague from St. Petersburg Vasily Neustroyev, who is kept in a pre-trial detention centre on charges of crimes that he did not commit. Yabloko offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Pskov are collecting personal guarantees for Vasily. Personal guarantee is one of the preventive measures that is not related to imprisonment. The guarantor who signed the paper guarantees that the accused will comply with the obligations imposed on him and will not hide from the investigation, and the court.

Any Russian citizens both personally familiar or not familiar with Vasily can sign a guarantee letter for him in the Yabloko offices in Moscow, St.Petersburg and Pskov until the evening of Monday, 24 June.

It should be noted that Vasily Neustroyev, a historian, elections observer and member of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko, has been kept in a pre-trial detention centre over a year already, since 6 June, 2023, on a trumped-up criminal case of the youth movement Vesna included by the authorities in the register of extremist oraganisations. Vasily has nothing to do with the Vesna movement and has never been a member of it. He is accused under six articles of the Criminal Code at once:

– Article 207.3, Part 2, items “b” and “d” (“public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of armed forces” by a group of persons motivated by political hatred – up to ten years in prison);

– Article 212, Part 1.1 (“involvement in the organisation of mass riots” – up to ten years in prison);

– Article 239, Part 2 (“establishment of an NGO that infringes on the personality and rights of citizens” – up to six years in prison);

– Article 280.4, Part 3 (“public calls for activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation” committed by an organised group – up to seven years in prison);

– Article 282.1, Part 1 (“establishment of an extremist community” – up to ten years in prison);

– Article 354.1, Part 4 (“rehabilitation of Nazism” by prior conspiracy – up to five years in prison).

On 6 June, 2023, Neustroyev’s apartment in St. Petersburg was searched. On the same day, he was taken to Moscow for interrogation at the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia.

The case was brought to the St. Petersburg City Court. The date for the first hearing has not yet been set.

We know Vasily Neustroev as a decent, honest and responsible person, an intellectual, a good friend and a patriot in the true sense of the word and we ask our supporters for help.