A resident of Koma was fined for a white-red-white flag on his avatar

The court in Syktyvkar fined the urbanist and former head of “Urban Projects in Koma” Dmitry Makhov two thousand rubles. A protocol on the demonstration of extremist symbols was drawn up for him. This is reported by Komi Memorial.

Makhov was detained on April 2 on his way out of the house. The reason for drawing up the report was an avatar with a white-red-white flag of the Belarusian opposition in the VKontakte social network.

According to SOTA, a few weeks before the arrest, employees of the Center for Combating Extremism offered Makhov to “meet and talk”.

Makhov is also an assistant to Koma State Council deputy Viktor Vorobyev – the first regional deputy in Russia to be included in the register of “foreign agents”.

• The white-red-white flag is a Belarusian historical symbol. It was the flag of the Belarusian People’s Republic, which existed for a short time in 1918, and after the collapse of the USSR – the official flag of independent Belarus. In 1995, as a result of the referendum, which was held in the conditions of the attack of the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko on the democratic opposition, the state symbols were replaced by others, close to the flag and coat of arms of the BSSR. Later, the white-red-white flag was banned by the Belarusian authorities. In 2020, it was used by participants of mass protests against the Lukashenko regime, which began after the falsification of the presidential election results.