In Vladivostok, a communist will be tried for threatening a memorial plaque to monarchists with a tube from a grenade launcher

The prosecutor’s office of the Leninsky district of Vladivostok approved the indictment against the Communist Party activist, lawyer Maxim Chikhunov. He is charged with hooliganism motivated by political hatred with the use of an object used as a weapon (part 2 of article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The activist faces up to seven years in prison.

According to investigators, in October 2022, Maksim Chikhunov “violated public order and expressed clear disrespect for society by simulating the firing of a grenade launcher on a memorial plaque erected on the 100th anniversary of the Amur Zemsky Sobor under the leadership of General Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs,” the report says. message supervisory agency. The board was installed in the center of Vladivostok on a house down Svetlanskaya (former Leninskaya) street.

On August 5, 1922, at the Zemsky Sobor in Vladivostok, a decision was made to restore the Romanov dynasty, and General Diterikhs was elected interim dictator. On August 8, 1922, Diterichs was officially proclaimed the ruler of the Amur state formation and issued decrees, renaming the Amur state formation into the Amur Zemsky Territory. Mikhail Diterikhs led the army, renamed the Zemskaya rat. After losing the civil war, General Dieterikhs with the remnants of his rati left the territory of Russia in October 1922.

Maxim Chikhunov does not deny the fact that he threatened the memorial plaque with a “tube from a grenade launcher”, but he believes that “the installation of this plaque was disrespectful to society.” “I did it in protest. It is impossible to erect monuments to monarchists on Leninskaya Street. Let’s also install memorials for Makhno or the American interventionists,” Mr. Chikhunov told Kommersant. He believes that the investigation misclassified his actions. “If this is hooliganism, then already paragraph “b” of Part 1 of Art. 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – based on political hatred, but without weapons, ”the communist said. Under this article, the maximum punishment is up to five years in prison.

Anatoly Dolgachev, the first secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, told Kommersant that he does not support both the installation of a memorial plaque to the monarchists and Maxim Chikhunov’s demarche. “Currently, the question of expelling Chikhunov from the party is being considered,” Mr. Dolgachev said.

Mr. Chihunov was a member of Andrey Ishchenko’s campaign headquarters, nearly won in the election of the governor of Primorye in September 2018.

Alexey Chernyshev, Vladivostok