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As opposed to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Russian opposition figure Leonid Gozman was detained today for comparing Soviet leader Iosif Stalin to Germany’s Adolf Hitler in a Facebook message.
“Hitler was an absolute evil, but Stalin was even worse. The SS were criminals, but the NKVD was even scarier because the Chekists murdered their own,” the message posted last April.
Gozman, who had already been detained in July for failing to report his dual Russian-Israeli citizenship but was later released, will spend the night in a central Moscow police station, according to his lawyer, Yulia Tregubova of the OVD-Info organization.
The politician was detained under article 13.48 of the civil code on identifying actions committed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany; police told TASS news agency.
Russian President Vladimir Putin enacted a law passed by the Duma, or Chamber of Deputies, last year, banning such a comparison.
Under the article, Gozman, who was arrested on his way out of the hospital, can be sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest or a fine.
Gozman, 72, chairman of the liberal Union of Right Forces movement, signed a manifesto in 2014 against Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
After the Russian military campaign in Ukraine started, he left Russia but returned in May, when he was declared a “foreign agent.”
For “smearing” the Russian army for the “special military operation” in Ukraine, police last week detained the former opposition mayor of Yekaterinburg, Leonid Roizman, but he was later released on charges.
Two other well-known Russian opposition figures, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza are in custody for spreading false information about the armed forces.
In addition, the former head of the Open Russia organization, Andrei Pivovarov, was sentenced to four years in June for participating in an “undesirable organization.”
According to OVD-Info, authorities have brought more than 200 criminal cases against Russian citizens for opposing the war, seven of which have resulted in prison sentences.
The most high-profile case is that of Moscow MP Alexei Gorinov, who was sentenced to seven years for denouncing the death of Ukrainian children and calling for withdrawing Russian troops from Ukraine.
