The fuel crisis has returned in several regions of Russia, and some of those who publicly denounced the situation have ended up being sanctioned. Authorities accuse them of “participating in public actions or promoting unauthorized protests”.
In Russia, the gasoline crisis no longer just means queues at filling stations and sales restrictions. For some of those who had the courage to publicly complain about the lack of fuel, the authorities have taken severe measures.
In Volgograd, five residents filmed a message on July 16 addressed to the President of the Investigation Committee of Russia, Aleksandr Bastrykin, in which they complained about the situation at the city’s gas stations and demanded an investigation into the distribution of fuel. The participants also drew attention to the fact that local administration representatives would have been fueled with the help of fuel cards, while other drivers were facing restrictions.
The filming did not go without consequences. The police considered the action of the five as an “unauthorized public demonstration” and detained the participants, according to obozrevatel.
One of them, lawyer Aleksei Sevastianov, received five days of administrative arrest, officially for allegedly opposing the police. Another participant, Tatiana Smetanko, was fined 10,000 rubles by the Central District Court of Volgograd, after the court deemed her participation in the collective filming as an unauthorized “mass action”.
Details, HERE