Traces of Ilya Ponomarev are being sought in four regions
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Employees of the Investigative Committee of Russia conducted searches in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Veliky Novgorod and the Kemerovo region, including the homes of Mikhail Lobanov, associate professor at Moscow State University, and Alexander Kalinin-Sokolenko, editor-in-chief of the Ladoga.ru online publication. The searches were carried out in connection with a criminal case on the dissemination of fakes about the RF Armed Forces, initiated against ex-State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev (recognized as a foreign agent and extremist). The investigators were also interested in the participation of activists in the activities of the NGO Congress of People’s Deputies, which in 2022 in Poland chose “alternative authorities” in Russia.
Sources reported about searches at the homes of Ilya Ponomarev’s supporters in four regions TASS And “RIA News” in law enforcement agencies. “Awoke. They break the door to us, ”wrote Mikhail Lobanov, an associate professor of Moscow State University living in Moscow, in his Telegram channel. Investigative actions also took place in Veliky Novgorod, in the capital’s apartment of Nodari Khananashvili, the coordinator of the Enlightenment Charitable Foundation, in the Kemerovo Region, with the ex-candidate for the State Duma from the Yabloko party, Galina Filchenko, in St. Petersburg, at the editor-in-chief of the online publication Ladoga.ru Alexandra Kalinina-Sokolenko.
In St. Petersburg, police officers came to the journalist as part of a criminal case under Art. 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the RF Armed Forces”), initiated in December 2022 against former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev (recognized as a foreign agent and included in the list of terrorists and extremists).
As Mr. Kalinin-Sokolenko explained to Kommersant, the reason for the special event was the decision of the Savelovsky District Court of Moscow at the request of the investigator of the Moscow Investigative Committee of Russia (Kommersant has a copy).
The journalist said that law enforcement officers were looking for things and correspondence with a view to communication with Mr. Ponomarev: “We checked electronic media – a laptop, a phone. They didn’t seize anything, because they didn’t find anything that would indicate my involvement in it.” Alexander Kalinin-Sokolenko added that the police behaved correctly and there were no complaints against them. He is not in the status of a suspect or a witness in the case.
TASS sources in law enforcement agencies also linked the searches with the participation of its defendants in the activities of the NGO Congress of People’s Deputies (Kongres Deputowanych Ludowych; on May 18, the organization was recognized by the Ministry of Justice as undesirable in the Russian Federation). In 2022, the NPO held an event in Poland, where it formed “alternative Russian authorities,” TASS reported, and Mr. Ponomarev was the organizer of the meeting. Recall, Ilya Ponomarev, after the deprivation of parliamentary immunity in 2015, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office (during the investigation of the case of embezzlement of the Skolkovo Foundation), moved to the United States, and then to Kiev. The ex-parliamentarian was arrested in absentia in Russia on charges of distributing fakes (under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
In September 2022, Ilya Ponomarev reported that the responsibility for murder in Russia, Darya Dugin (daughter of the political scientist Alexander Dugin) was taken over by a certain National Republican Army. Mr. Ponomarev takes part in the fighting on the territory of Ukraine on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
When asked by Kommersant why the security forces were interested in his person, Mr. Kalinin-Sokolenko suggested that his personal political views could be the reason.
“For a long time I adhere to left-wing opposition views, opposed raising the retirement age, against amendments to the Constitution and in defense of Sergei Furgal (ex-governor of the Khabarovsk Territory.— “b”),” he said.
Mikhail Lobanov reported in his Telegram channel, which “has nothing to do with Ponomarev”, and the investigators, in his opinion, only use the criminal case against the ex-deputy as a formal reason for a search in his apartment. Mr. Lobanov’s lawyer, Tatiana Okushko, said that her client was interrogated at the ICR department in Moscow as a witness and released. The former municipal deputy, Mr. Kalinin-Sokolenko, noted that he has no particular sympathy for the figure of Ilya Ponomarev, and he does not share the ex-deputy’s calls for the overthrow of power in Russia.
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