Press Release, 19.05.2022

The Pskov Regional Court satisfied the complaint by Lev Shlosberg, a member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and Chairman of the Pskov branch of Yabloko, Nikolai Kuzmin, a municipal deputy, and Yekaterina Novikova, a member of the Yabloko Regional Council, against an illegal decision of the city court to open a criminal case on “slander” against the Governor of the Pskov region Mikhail Vedernikov in an anonymous Telegram channel.

On 18 March, the flats of Lev Shlosberg, Nikolai Kuzmin, Yekaterina Novikova, as well as two journalists were searched as part of a criminal case on slander against the Governor. The Pskov Yabloko had nothing to do with the Telegram channel mentioned in the search order. According the Yabloko members and the journalists, the criminal case was completely falsified and bore all the signs of a direct political order.

Lev Shlosberg commented on the case:

Let me remind you that the criminal case was initiated by an investigator of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the city of Pskov on 16 March against “unidentified persons”. At the same time, the case immediately affected us: the police considered that “there was information about the involvement of NN in the committing of this crime” and also that “there were sufficient grounds to believe that NN might keep documents confirming the committing of the crime at his address […]”, that led to extrajudicial searches at our places of residence, which took place on 18 March and received a great public attention.

During the searches, there was found no evidence of our involvement in the committing of crimes.

As people whose rights were directly affected by the investigative actions, we appealed to the city court  against the very decision to initiate a criminal case, but Judge Artamonov considered that our rights had not been affected by the initiation of the case and refused to accept the complaints for consideration, that is, the court hearings did not take place.

We filed an appeal against the refusal to accept our complaints for consideration. The representative of the regional public prosecutor’s office stated in court that, in his opinion, our rights had not been violated, and asked the court to uphold the decision of the city court.

However, the regional court adopted our position, satisfied our complaint and canceled the decision of the Pskov City Court.

Read more about the persecution of Yabloko members after the start of the “special operation”.

LEV SHLOSBERG

is a member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko and Chair of the Pskov regional branch of the party. Headed the Yabloko faction in the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies