The State Duma approved in the first reading amendments to punish extremist propaganda

State Duma deputies approved in the first reading bill on criminal liability for public justification or propaganda of extremist ideology.

Package of amendments to Art. 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public calls for extremist activities) contributed in July of this year, deputies from the United Russia faction Vasily Piskarev, Anna Kuznetsova, Pyotr Tolstoy, Ernest Valeev and Andrey Kartapolov. In accordance with the amendments, public justification or propaganda of extremism will be punishable by up to five years in prison, along with liability for calls for extremist activities.

In Art. 280 of the Criminal Code, it is proposed to add two notes on what is meant by public justification of extremism. We are talking about a public statement in which the ideology and practice of extremism are recognized as “correct, in need of support and imitation.” Propaganda of extremism will be understood as the dissemination of materials or information aimed at forming in a person “the ideology of extremism, the conviction of its attractiveness, or the idea that it is permissible to carry out extremist activities.”

“We believe that the adoption of our amendments will be an important preventive measure, aimed primarily at protecting children and youth from the destructive influence of extremist ideology and attempts to involve them in illegal, dangerous activities,” Piskarev previously commented on the amendments.

The bill, the deputy explained, was a reaction, among other things, to the propaganda of massacres in educational institutions and kindergartens.

In the explanatory note to the bill, the authors pointed to an increased number of flagrant cases of such murders, for example in Kerch, Kazan and Izhevsk. Mass shooting, deputies believe, “is acquiring proportions comparable to extremism.”