Tatiana Schneider’s blog post, 9.11.2020

On 3 November, I received a strange call from the police. An interesting conversation took place, the content of which caused me, to put it mildly, bewilderment. Also I even had to give a written explanation to the policeman. The essence of all this, for me, strange act was the following: on 5 August this year, I published a post of my authorship on the Vkontakte social network, and later, on 10 August, 2020, it was edited (by me) and published in the Internet information channel Business Kurs (Business Course). The post was about emissions from the Omsktekhuglerod plant. I described my observations and memories of the emissions. I described the consequences of soot flying into houses, using the example how it damaged furniture. On the Vkontakte social network, this post was backed up by photographs of the very furniture that got soot, which was blown into the windows by the wind. Time passed and at the beginning of November I learned that Mr. Kaplunat, the well-known “soot king”, General Director of this enterprise, wrote a statement against me basing on the above criticism and my subjective opinion, where he accuses me of extremism and also of a “corruption component”. In a statement to the police, the author was trying to accuse me of wanting to organise a kind of a strike at the enterprise he managed, citing as an example “the mechanisms by which they operate” in Belarus and Khabarovsk. And he asked the police to deal with me, since, according to him, people like me were participating in the destabilisation of political regimes. I am very sorry that any private criticism of the Omsktekhuglerod plant evoked such a reaction from its management. Valery Nikolayevich Kaplunat  was trying to make me liable under the article “extremism” because I dared to criticise his enterprise.

Mr. Kaplunat, instead of trying to understand the issue, in fact, accused me in his three-page statement to the police, of “been financed from outside…”, the desire to stop not only his production, but almost to make a revolution.

The fact that I am a member of the opposition party Yabloko ran like a “golden thread” in his accusations, and, most likely, this was the reason for Valery Nikolaevich Kaplunat for his serious accusations against me. Summarising the above, I would like to emphasise that all the accusations of Mr. Kaplunat are open lies and slander. I have always been, and I will be, against bloodshed and against lawlessness, and for the building of democratic institutions. I have always stood and will stand on the side of the law, not on the side of force.

I also believe that the actions of Valery Kaplunat are targeted at trying not only at slandering me, but also to intimidating me. And I cannot rule out that the impact may be not only moral, but also physical.

TATIANA SCHNEIDER

is Deputy Chair of the Omsk  branch of Yabloko