The participant of the race with the flag of Ukraine was awarded compensation for detention

The court in Novosibirsk declared the detention of Andrey Korolchuk, who was running with the flag of Ukraine on his T-shirt, illegal. He will be paid 15,000 in compensation for moral damage. This is reported by Sibir.Realii.

Korolchuk wore a t-shirt with the Ukrainian flag at the autumn Running Festival in Novosibirsk out of a sense of solidarity with relatives living in Ukraine. He said that after the start of a full-scale war “he was as if in anabiosis.”

After the race, Korolchuk was informed that the police were looking for him. He himself came to the police department in Berdsk, from where he was taken to the Central police department in Novosibirsk. There, an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Center for Combating Extremism asked Korolchuk about his attitude to the war in Ukraine and asked him to show his tattoos (there were none). A protocol was drawn up on the detainee under the article on discrediting the army. Two days later, the case was closed due to the absence of an offense.

• Russians protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including by hanging Ukrainian flags or wearing clothes in the corresponding colors. Cases are brought against them under the administrative article on discrediting the army and they are fined. For example, in April 2022, a Muscovite was fined ten thousand rubles for wearing blue and yellow sneakers. They were called “means of political agitation”.
• During the war in Russia, more than six thousand cases of “discrediting” of the Russian army were initiated, Mediazona calculated.