Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 9 – There has been so much media hype and discussion about the Russian government bringing charges against its citizens for disseminating fake news and/or insulting the Russian military that “there is the sense" that they number in the thousands, Lena Lemyasova says. But in fact, the actual number of people charged is far smaller.
According to OVD-Info which tracks such cases, the journalist says, only 146 Russians have been charged with disseminating fake news and only 40 additional ones have had legal cases brought against them for discrediting the Russian military, figures that are quite small considering the coverage they have received (holod.media/2023/01/10/how-many-fakes/).
At the present time, there are only about 40 cases with regard to disseminating fakes and only six for discrediting the army, numbers which suggest that the application of these new laws adopted last spring is not increasing but remaining stable or even declining slightly, Lemyasova continues.
What this shows, she suggests, is that it is less the number of cases than the media attention they have received that signals what the Kremlin cares about. It certainly appears less interested in actually punishing people for such infractions than it does in spreading the idea that anyone who commits them will be punished.
Because so many Russians believe that far more people have been charged and sentenced for these crimes, the Kremlin has been successful in promoting that notion, a use of law and the media that in and of itself says much about how the Putin regime is currently ruling the Russian Federation.
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