A 40-year-old man wearing blue and yellow sneakers was detained in central Moscow on charges of participating in an unsanctioned rally. As his lawyer Ilya Utkin told The Insider, the police considered the footwear «a means of agitation.»
The man was detained on March 6. According to Utkin, his client had been at a downtown shopping mall to buy gifts for his wife and daughter. The police arrested him in Teatralnaya Square and took him to the Lianozovo Department of Internal Affairs. There a police report was drawn up under Part 5 of Article 20.2 of the Criminal Code (failure to observe the rules for organizing a rally), stating the man had been shouting slogans in a group of people holding an unsanctioned rally. The court fined him 10,000 rubles. The man is going to appeal the judgement.
Since the start of the war against Ukraine, all over Russia the police have been detaining everyone who in one way or another speaks out about war, peace and Ukraine. On April 2, a protester was detained in Moscow holding a package of Miratorg ham, with the second half of the brand name crossed out. On March 28 a protester holding a Mir bank card was detained near the Lubyanka metro station in Moscow. On April 18 Izhevsk cops pronounced a circle dance to the song «Let there always be sunshine» an anti-war rally. Three legal cases were instigated against a resident of Novosibirsk over a poster which said «Putin should resign». In Ivanovo a man was detained with a poster that read «*** ****». According to the court, the asterisks resembled the slogan «No to War,» and the five-pointed star was «an important ideological symbol» of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.