In Yekaterinburg, activist Shirshikov was released from pre-trial detention center

In Yekaterinburg, the court released activist and publicist Yaroslav Shirshikov, accused of justifying terrorism due to a post about blogger Vladlena Tatarsky, who died in a bomb explosion, from pre-trial detention. Shirshikov was also one of the last to meet with The Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Hershkovich before his detention in Yekaterinburg. Hershkovich is accused of espionage, the affairs of Shirshikov and Hershkovich are not officially related to each other.

As reported by the Ekaterinburg publication It’s My City, the charges against Shirshikov were not dropped, however, the restraining order was changed to a stay-at-home sign “taking into account his personality and social situation.” The activist was not restricted in using the Internet.

Shirshikov was detained in April. The reason for initiating a criminal case was his post as a publicist in a telegram in which, according to the investigation, he spoke approvingly of the death of Tatarsky.

Shortly before the detention, at the end of March, the activist met Hershkovich during his trip to Yekaterinburg and was one of the first to report the journalist’s disappearance – it later turned out that he had been detained. The FSB accuses Hershkovich of collecting secret information about defense enterprises. Shirshikov said that Hershkovich planned to write about the attitude of the inhabitants of the Urals to the invasion of Ukraine.

Evan Hershkovich is still in the Moscow pre-trial detention center, despite the demands for his release, which were made by the US administration and leading American mass media.

Earlier, Yaroslav Shirshikov became famous as one of the leaders of the protests against the construction of the church on the site of the city square, which ended with the success of the protesters. He was also found guilty of slandering the president’s plenipotentiary in the Ukrainian Federal District, Mykola Tsukanov, whom Shirshikov called a “Polish spy.”

In Russia, in recent years, dozens of criminal cases have been initiated on the charge of justifying terrorism, including sentences to real terms of imprisonment.