We are talking about Article 13.53 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses – “responsibility for searching for deliberately extremist content.” The SVR explains that now even the very fact of searching for certain information in a browser can become the basis for drawing up a protocol.
In practice, this is accompanied by mass checks of phones: the police may require you to unlock the device, view the gallery, browser history and instant messengers such as Telegram. Searching, subscribing or reviewing “suspicious” content may be regarded as an interest in extremism or even its dissemination, which serves as the basis for administrative or criminal proceedings.
“The basis can be anything: a repost, a saved picture, a meme, or even a like. They are persecuted for publications that were many years old and for deleted messages,” the SVR noted.
Cases often begin not with monitoring, but with denunciations from colleagues, neighbors or acquaintances. According to the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, since 2010, Russian law enforcement officers have opened more than 30 thousand cases for activity on social networks, including 80% of administrative and 46% of criminal proceedings related to VKontakte (a banned social network in Ukraine), and a quarter of criminal cases related to the Russian Federation, Telegram.
The main charges relate to “extremism”, “discrediting the army” and spreading fake news about the army. Even participating in closed chats or subscribing to “undesirable” channels can become grounds for persecution, the SVR added.
