The Dolgoprudny City Court fined politician Boris Nadezhdin 1,000 rubles under the article on displaying banned symbols. This was reported by a Mediazona correspondent from the courtroom.
On July 13, a message appeared on Nadezhdin’s Telegram channel saying he was being taken to a police station in Dolgoprudny, near Moscow. A few hours later, after the protocol was drawn up, he was released pending the hearing. It later emerged that the reason was a photo of Alexei Navalny.
The case materials referred to a 2023 post on Nadezhdin’s channel containing a link to a YouTube stream by Elvira Vikhareva in which he took part. According to the protocol, Navalny’s photograph was shown for about 10 seconds at the 58th minute of the broadcast. At that moment, Nadezhdin was saying that if he won the presidential election, his first decree would free Navalny and other political prisoners.
“The real aim of what is happening here is to silence me and prevent me from running for the State Duma,” Nadezhdin told the court, adding that signatures in his support were being collected in four cities of the Moscow region.
The politician also said he did not understand why the face of a specific person was being treated as the symbol of an extremist organization. He insisted that his own Telegram channel had never contained an image of Navalny and that he had only posted a link to someone else’s broadcast.
Nadezhdin asked the court to take his health into account: he said he has Group II disability status, has suffered two heart attacks, has diabetes, and that his bank accounts are frozen. He asked to be found not guilty. His defense said it disagreed with the protocol, the expert assessment, and other case materials, and asked for the proceedings to be terminated. The lawyers also argued that it was unclear why Navalny’s image was being interpreted as FBK symbolism.
On the eve of the hearing, the politician said he had received an order banning him from leaving the country. On July 10, the Justice Ministry added Nadezhdin to the “foreign agents” register. The ministry said he had spread false information about government decisions and the electoral system and had called for participation in unsanctioned protests.