Law of the Week

Week-ending 6 November 2020

Duma deputy Irina Yarovaya has submitted a bill providing for fines of up to 3m roubles for organisations that ‘deny facts established by the Nuremberg Tribunal.’  The bill is intended to ‘ensure protection of historical memory’ and ‘the inevitability of punishment’ for the ‘rehabilitation of Nazism.’

RAPSI reported on Friday, 6 November 2020: A Deputy Chair of the State Duma Irina Yarovaya has submitted a draft law on fines of up to 3 million rubles for organizations denying facts established by the Nuremberg Tribunal.  The bill is to ensure complex protection of the historical memory and inevitability of punishment for all guilty of rehabilitation of Nazism, an explanatory note to the initiative reads. The legislative proposal envisages administrative fines ranging from 500,000 to 3 million rubles ($6,500 – $40,000) for companies publicly distributing information containing denial of facts established by the International Military Tribunal at Nurenberg, welcome for crimes established by the Tribunal’s sentence. The fines are also to be imposed for fake information about the USSR actions during World War II published on the internet or  by mass media.

RAPSI reported on Friday, 6 November 2020: A court in Perm on Friday sentenced a local resident Daniil Shestakov, who had published photos of Nazi criminals on the website of the Immortal Regiment movement, to 9 months of community service, the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office reports. The man was found guilty of rehabilitation of Nazism. According to case papers, Shestakov posted a photo of Andrey Vlasov, a Russian Red Army General, who had defected to Nazi Germany after being captured during World War II, there not later than May 5. In mid-May, investigative authorities opened criminal cases after finding out that photographs of Nazi criminals were published on websites of the Immortal Regiment movement. The photos were published in the framework of a virtual event aimed at preservation and perpetuating of the memory of the generation fighting against Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War.