“Voice” was dragged into discredit – Newspaper Kommersant No. 185 (7386) dated 10/06/2022

On Wednesday, members of the movement for the protection of voters’ rights “Golos” (included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents) underwent a series of searches in a criminal case on repeated discrediting of the army. The defendant in it is Mikhail Gusev, an Ivanovo activist who left Russia, who, according to human rights activists, is not a member of Golos and does not even know any of them. The leadership of the movement suspects that the case can only be a pretext for putting pressure on “civilian observers.” The opinions of experts on this matter differed.

Searches were carried out on the morning of October 5 at the Moscow office of Golos, at the home of its co-chairman Grigory Melkonyants and members of the council of the movement Vitaly Kovin, Arkady Lyubarev (both recognized as foreign agents) and Irina Maltseva, as well as at the home of electoral analyst Sergei Shpilkin, who had left Russia, who collaborated with human rights activists . In addition to them, the security forces came to the municipal deputy from the Tver region Nikolai Kuzmin (“Yabloko”), a member of the territorial election committee of Pskov from “Yabloko” Ekaterina Novikova (according to Mr. Melkonyants, she was a “long-term observer” of “Voices”) and a journalist of the publication “Pskovskaya Gubernia » Denis Kamalyagin (recognized as a foreign agent, left Russia).

They also wanted to search the apartment of the Golos coordinator in the Moscow region, Inna Karezina (included in the register of foreign agents), but, according to her, they did not open the door.

A day earlier, searches took place at the home of Golos coordinator in the Chelyabinsk region, Irina Guseva. In the evening, another Moscow activist of Golos, Vladimir Yegorov, was taken to the police station, accused of disobeying the police.

The presented search warrants (“Kommersant” got acquainted with them) indicate that investigative actions are being carried out as part of a criminal case on discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation (Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code, up to five years in prison), initiated by the Ivanovo Ministry of Internal Affairs against an election observer and participant anti-war actions of Mikhail Gusev. In March, he was fined under a similar article of the Code of Administrative Offenses for a one-man picket with a poster depicting eight stars. In May, the activist left Russia, after which he announced on his Telegram channel that they were going to initiate a case against him for evading the army (Article 328 of the Criminal Code), but during the check, the investigation did not reveal signs of a crime. A new case was opened for posts published on the same channel that “contained a negative assessment of the RF Armed Forces” and attributed them to “committing violent acts against citizens of Ukraine.” The security forces explained the need for searches by the fact that the activists “may have” objects and documents “important for the criminal case.” Later, human rights activists reported that all equipment, electronic media, bank cards and passports were confiscated from them.

Recall, the article of the Code of Administrative Offenses on discrediting the army and a similar article of the Criminal Code for a repeated violation came into force on March 6, 2022. In August, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that 3,300 administrative protocols had been drawn up in Russia under this article, and the OVD-Info project (included in the register of foreign agents) counted at least 20 criminal cases initiated. The verdict has so far been passed on only one of them, and among the defendants is, for example, the ex-mayor of Yekaterinburg Evgeny Roizman.

After the searches, Golos members issued a statement in which they noted that the security forces considered Mikhail Gusev to be a “functionary” of the movement, although he had “no relation” to him.

In addition, human rights activists pointed out that in one of the search warrants “Voice” called “an undesirable structure in Russia”, although such a status was never assigned to the movement. “Golos regards the incident as pressure on civilian observers on the eve of the presidential election campaign in 2024, which is less than 15 months away from the start. Such massive pressure on our participants took place in 2011-2012, against the backdrop of mass protests against dishonest and unfree elections,” the statement said. Grigory Melkonyants himself did not rule out that the security forces “took up the final destruction of Golos”, and added that “to do this under the guise of a special operation is the time.”

It should be noted that on the same day, the coordinator of the Tver branch of Golos Artem Vazhenkov (included in the register of foreign agents), who left the Russian Federation, said that the Investigative Committee threatened him with a criminal case on “malicious evasion of the duties of a foreign agent” (Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code, up to five years imprisonment). He does not know what kind of violations he is talking about (lack of labeling of publications, problems with reporting, etc.).

Political scientist Konstantin Kalachev considers the current searches “a warning to the Golos activists who have not yet left.” In his opinion, the authorities view human rights activists as “agents of influence who set the task of discrediting the Russian electoral system and delegitimizing the election results,” and “the authorities do not need such observers.”

Political scientist Alexander Asafov, on the contrary, does not believe in the version of “vindictiveness and accumulated claims” of the authorities against Golos. “They warn before something, but in the near future I don’t see any events related to the activities or inaction of Golos: a single voting day has passed, and the next one will not be soon. And if there are claims, they are always substantiated by the case materials. The initiation of cases is not tied to the accumulation of claims, it is associated with the emergence of grounds for their initiation, ”the expert is sure.

Kira Heifetz, Maria Starikova