In Russia, the trial of a deputy bears witness to the absurdity of the repression against dissenting voices.
Mikhail Abdalkine, elected under the banner of the Communist Party, sits in the assembly of the Samara region east of Moscow. In March he was fined 1,600 euros (150,000 rubles) for “discredit” from the army and the authorities. His appeal will be considered on April 27.
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In February, he published a video where we see him sitting at his parliamentary desk watching a speech by Vladimir Putin on his computer.
Russian President justifies intervention in Ukraine denounces “centuries of colonialism, dictate and hegemony” from NATO and the United States. The deputy looks very focused. But there is something wrong with the picture: he has hung a handful of cooked spaghetti hanging over his ears. and move to the rhythm of his nods.
Now in the Russian language, “stop hanging noodles from my ears“, could be translated as “stop telling me nonsense“. In short, it’s completely schoolboy. But not everyone liked it. In particular the pro-Kremlin party “United Russia” whose deputy Alexander Khinchtein called on the Communist Party, usually very docile, to “put back in place“the chosen rebel.
Under the law adopted in March 2022, just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is no longer possible to issue any criticism of what is still officially “a special military operation“and not a war. Mikhaïl Abdalkine’s prank should have remained a good joke, it becomes an offense punishable by a fine. This story says it all about the Kremlin’s desire to crush the slightest bit of protest.
A screed of lead on all citizens
Moreover, this law applies more and more often. At the beginning it was aimed above all at the notorious detractors of the Russian president, the political opponents, the independent media (the only ones that remain today are all in exile). But little by little the leaden screed fell on ordinary citizens. Thousands of Russians who have publicly criticized the conflict are being fined.
Dozens of others are awaiting trial or have already been sentenced to heavy sentences. In March a 23-year-old computer science student, Dmitry Ivanov, was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison. On his Telegram channel “Protestny MGU” (“MGU who protests”), created to denounce violations of student rights in his university, he had notably published critical messages against the Russian operation and shared statements by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A 13-year-old schoolgirl was placed in an orphanage for having made a drawing against the war and her father, who also spoke out against the war, took two years of penal colony.
Tell the truth, the best joke
MP Mikhail Abdalkine was supported by members of his party, which is usually rather docile: “instead of examining the files of killers, crooks and those who really steal the national heritage, they (the judges) decided to punish with the ruble a man who has a different point of view from that of the regime in power“, lamented a deputy of the Duma (lower house of the Russian Parliament), the communist Denis Parfionov, in an interview with the Youtube channel Svobodnaïa Pressa.
The interested party denounces his conviction as “illegal, politically motivated“. He refuses to give up and claims the right to laugh by posting this quote from the writer Bernard Shaw on his profile: “The funniest joke in the world… is to tell the truth“.