There are no mass riots in Bashkiria, there are isolated manifestations – Kommersant

Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that there are no riots or mass protests in Bashkiria. He called what was happening in the republic “individual manifestations” within the competence of law enforcement agencies and local authorities. According to him, the actions were not “massive,” so the term “mass riots” is not entirely correct.

“I would not agree with the wording “mass riots” and “mass protests.” There are no riots or mass protests. There are individual manifestations that rather relate exclusively to the competence of local authorities and law enforcement agencies,” Dmitry Peskov said at the press conference.

“Here in this case I did not use a legal term, but a term that determines the number of people who take part, because the question was formulated that way. From a non-legal point of view, I do not agree that these were some kind of mass actions,” said Dmitry Peskov when asked why he did not agree with the wording “mass riots.”

Today, on the main square of Ufa, a rally was held in support of Bashkir activist Fail Alchinov, sentenced to four years in a general regime colony for inciting ethnic hatred (listed as a terrorist and extremist). Several people were detained.

Before this, on January 17, the day the activist was sentenced, an unauthorized protest took place in Baymak. The Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) opened a case of mass riots (Article 212 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Nine protesters were found guilty under the article of disobedience to a lawful order of a police officer (Part 1 of Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation). The court arrested them for up to 15 days.

On Thursday, January 18, videos appeared on social networks with calls to take to the streets in support of Fail Alchinov. In Ufa, the square in front of the monument to Salavat Yulaev in the center of the city was proposed as a gathering place. According to a Kommersant correspondent, at the beginning the action was small: in the first half hour, about a hundred or two people gathered on the square. Later, there were more participants in the action: according to preliminary data, about 1 thousand. Most of them were walking around the square.

Police officers, according to unofficial data, detained about ten people in Ufa today. There is no official data on the number of protesters and detainees. The Ministry of Internal Affairs for Bashkiria refrained from commenting.

Read more in the Kommersant article. “One sentence will turn into several”.

Anastasia Larina