On March 29, the Volzhsky City Court fined Alexander Efimov, a member of the federal bureau of the Yabloko party, the head of its local branch in Volzhsky, for discrediting the Russian armed forces.
The reason was his comment on a post on social networks about losses among civilians in Donbass during the fighting in 2014-2021. Efimov in his commentary referred to UN data.
The court found Efimov guilty of discrediting the army and imposed the minimum fine under this article - 30 thousand rubles. According to the politician, there was no evidence of his guilt or any connection between his comment and the discreditation. “There is no examination or confirmation that this page belongs to me. The screenshot from the case was practically unreadable. At the same time, the operatives claimed that I deleted the post itself, because they simply did not know that we were talking about a comment. They attributed words to me from the text of the UN Commissioner’s report,” Efimov told the Kavkaz.Realii publication, adding that he would appeal the decision to impose administrative liability.
The head of the Volga "Yabloko" believes that the trial was a signal from the authorities to stop his activities aimed against the renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad. He repeatedly spoke out against the renaming in the media, and in December he published a petition on the Change.org platform “We will not allow the renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad,” which was signed by about 1.5 thousand people in three days. On the day of the trial, there were more than 2.5 thousand “signatories”.
As “New DOSH” wrote, on February 1, 2023, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, a monument to Joseph Stalin was solemnly opened in Volgograd. Alexander Efimov, commenting on this event to the Caucasian Knot, said: “This is a rollback of the country, a rollback of society a century ago. It marks a return to repressive practices, to practices of terror, to political persecution.”
Discussions about renaming have been ongoing for many years. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the region itself should resolve this issue through a referendum. Last year, City Duma deputies decided to return the city’s “original, heroic name” on holidays. Nine days a year, “Stalingrad” signs are installed on federal highways at the entrances to the city.