In Yoshkar-Ola, the police have closed a case on a picket of snowmen
Dmitry Mishin, among other supporters of Nikolai Platoshkin’s Movement for New Socialism, built several snowmen in front of the Ministry of Interior of Mari El on January 24. The snowmen were placed there with the posters saying, "Peskov said, ‘There is no palace’ — we do believe him!", "Stop the crazy printer that grinds out anti-popular laws! The State Duma should resign! Those totally approving should be brought to justice!", "Freedom to Nikolai Platoshkin!", and others.
The police opened an administrative case against Mishin under Part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code (Violation of the Established Procedure for Conducting a Picket). The bench ruling stated that the activist "had displayed a visual propaganda", "had built a vertical structure on which a poster had been pulled.”
The police conducted a linguistic examination, which found statements "of a persuasive nature calling one primary group, united on the basis of belonging to the public, upon action in relation to another primary group, united on the basis of belonging to the authorities" in the text of the posters. However, they did not find a description of specific actions that citizens needed to perform under the influence of these calls in the campaign. As a result, law enforcement officers closed the case due to the absence of the event of a crime.
According to Mishin, in addition to violating the procedure for conducting a public event, the police tried to charge him with incitement to hatred towards authorities as a social group, but allegedly did not dare to do so.
Similar pickets of snowmen were also held in Kostroma and Arkhangelsk Oblast. On January 24, residents of Kostroma built several snowmen near the fence, surrounding the construction site of a nine-storied building, and attached posters, demanding to stop the site development of the grove, to them. In Arkhangelsk Oblast, activist of the Pomorye is not a Dump! Movement Elena Kalinina built several snowmen with posters "Down with the tsar", "This is our country", and "Vova, it is all over between us" near her house in the village of Zachachye.