In St. Petersburg, they detained an activist who picketed an amphibious assault ship

In St. Petersburg, police officers detained activist Vitaly Ioffe on Sunday. He stood on the embankment of Lieutenant Schmidt against the background of the large landing ship “Ivan Gren” in a single picket. Ioffe held a placard “What happened to the Kursk submarine? She sank. What happened to Russia? She drowned in blood.”

Vitaly Ioffe stood with the poster for several minutes, after which he was detained. Passers-by freed the police, Sever.Realii correspondent reports. The department drew up a report on the activist on the article about the so-called discrediting of the Russian army.

“Yesterday was the 23rd anniversary of the sinking of the Kursk submarine.” there were only widows and retired sailors. How can that be? – said Ioffe. – But people who now went to this special military operation out of false patriotism or for money, think that the family will treat them differently? Not like Kursk? But alas, it will be exactly the same as it was with the sailors at Kursk.”

On the 23rd anniversary of the death of the crew of the submarine “Kursk” on the ship “Ivan Gren” a mobile exhibition was opened in St. Petersburg. As reported by the Russian state agency TASS, the exhibition includes “military trophies obtained during the SVO (as the Russian authorities call the invasion of Ukraine – RS).

• The nuclear submarine “Kursk” sank on August 12, 2000 during research in the Barents Sea. According to the official version, the nuclear submarine “Kursk” died due to a torpedo explosion during preparation for a training attack. There were 118 sailors on board. On August 21, rescuers managed to open the hatch. An hour later, the submarine was raised to the surface. The investigation established that the explosion occurred in the torpedo compartment due to the leakage of hydrogen peroxide from a microcrack in the hull of one of the torpedoes. After the explosion, 23 sailors remained alive. They retreated to the ninth compartment, where they died a day later.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin is still criticized for refusing to interrupt his vacation immediately after the accident, when the fate of the crew was still unclear, as well as for his smiley utterance of the phrase “She drowned” in response to CNN’s Larry King’s question: “What happened to the submarine ?”
• In March 2022 – immediately after the beginning of Russia’s large-scale military invasion of Ukraine – the Code of Administrative Offenses and the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation included articles on responsibility “for public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces in order to protect the interests” of the country. According to the administrative article, violators face a fine of up to 50,000 rubles, with repeated “discrediting” it increases to 100,000 rubles. If more reports are drawn up on this article, the investigators can open a criminal case – in this case, the punishment is up to five years of imprisonment. According to human rights activists, more than eighty people have already been charged under the criminal article of discrediting the army.