Press Release, 15.08.2024

Photo: Boris Vishnevsky outside the courthouse / Photo by the regional branch of Yabloko

The Vasileostrovsky District Court of St.Petersburg fined Boris Vishnevsky, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, 15,000 roubles under Article 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation for alleged “participation in the activities of an undesirable organisation”, i.e. for participating in a live broadcast of a programme by the Golos independent election observers movement on 20 December, 2023. Earlier, Alexander Yefimov, a member of the Federal Bureau of the party from the Volgograd region, was fined for the same broadcast.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office considers Golos to be a structural division of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organisations (ENEMO), an international non-governmental organisation recognised as undesirable in Russia. On this basis, the Public Prosecutor’s Office demanded that Vishnevsky be held accountable.

The position of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, according to Vishnevsky and his representatives – attorney Andrei Chertkov and lawyer Alexander Kobrinsky, is unfounded, untenable and unsubstantiated. The Golos movement is not included in the list of undesirable organisations (which is confirmed by the official response of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation to the request of Andrei Chertkov).

Not a single official open source contains any information that the Golos movement is a structural subdivision of ENEMO. The official register of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation does not contain any information on the recognition of the Russian Golos movement as a subdivision of ENEMO. The Golos movement is not currently, nor has it ever been, a founder, participant or member of ENEMO, or its structural subdivision. Vishnevsky’s defence informed the court of this, presenting the corresponding official response from ENEMO.

The court also received the opinion of Mikhail Fedotov, Doctor of Law, professor, one of the authors of the Russian law “On Mass Media”, former Minister of the Press of the Russian Federation and former head of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, according to whom, an interview with any media outlet or organisation cannot in principle be considered as “participation” in its activities.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office presented the only “evidence” to the court – the conclusions of a certain specialist from Nizhny Novgorod, who claimed that Golos was allegedly a subdivision of ENEMO. However, his opinion was submitted in January 2022 (almost two years before Vishnevsky’s participation in the broadcast of Golos) and concerned the events of October 2021 (the elections of the Mayor of Tbilisi), and obviously could not be related to the present case.

The defence lawyers of Boris Vishnevsky note that the logic of the Public Prosecutor’s Office puts an end to any activity of independent deputies.

“A hypothetical Boris Vishnevsky or some other hypothetical deputy of the opposition party should be afraid of his own shadow. When giving an interview to any media outlet, any Internet resource, he must assume that this media outlet (as the Public Prosecutor’s Office will state later, relying on the “conclusions” of unknown “experts”) may be affiliated with an undesirable organisation, and, therefore, any contact is toxic. I asked a rhetorical question: is it possible to cooperate with an undesirable organisation about the existence of which you are unaware?” lawyer Andrei Chertkov says.

Judging by the answer of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, one needs to be afraid not only of one’s own shadow, but also prepare for the fact that the law will be different for those who support the government and for those who oppose it.

“Today we heard an outrageous gem from the public prosecutor: since Vishnevsky is recognised as a foreign agent, this means that his behaviour is destructive, contradicts the interests of state security, therefore, he must be held accountable for other actions,” lawyer Chertkov noted.

According to Boris Vishnevsky, the court’s decision is absolutely illegal and unlawful, is purely political in nature and represents ongoing political repression against the opposition.

“At the same time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office does not hide its political motivation, openly stating that since a person was included in the list of “foreign agents”, it means that in the interests of “state security” he must be punished for something he is not guilty of. The decision will certainly be appealed,” Vishnevsky commented.

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