In the Babushkinsky Court of Moscow, during the examination of the evidence in the libel case against blogger Alexei Navalny against the veteran of the Great Patriotic War Ignat Artemenko, the judge made a few more remarks to Navalny because of his comments.
One of them was the judge’s reaction to Navalny’s words that the prosecutor should stop “licking his fingers” when reading the case materials.
“I can’t look at it anymore,” Navalny said, interrupting the publication of written evidence of the case.
Also during the meeting, Navalny familiarly addressed the prosecutor, calling her “my dear”, and the veteran’s grandson – “the merchant grandfather” and “doll”. In response to the judge’s warnings, Navalny threatened: “I will remove you myself.”
Earlier that day, it was reported that he had already received more than ten reprimands for his familiar appeal to the participants in the process.
Remarks were also made against Navalny’s defense in the person of Vadim Kobzev and Olga Mikhailova.
At the meeting, a statement was read out by the veteran of the Great Patriotic War Ignat Artemenko, in which he asked to protect him from slander after being insulted by the blogger. The materials of the case took six volumes.
The prosecutor cited the conclusion of a linguistic examination, which indicated that Navalny’s comment regarding the front-line soldier contained a negative assessment. Linguistic expert Albina Glotova from the expert center of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation noted that the words “lackeys”, “traitors” and “shame” have a derogatory meaning in relation to those to whom they are addressed.
“I insist on the conclusions of the examination. The epithets used in the assessed commentary are derogatory, offensive, they are addressed to all participants in the video in question, ”the expert said.
On February 12, a hearing with the participation of Navalny is taking place at the Babushkinsky Court. The process began with comments from the defense. In particular, the judge began with a warning about the inadmissibility of the defendant’s behavior and twice reprimanded Navalny’s lawyer.
The defense of the accused challenged the judge Vera Akimova, saying that she was not impartial and could not conduct this criminal case. Navalny himself supported the proposal of his lawyers. After that, the judge retired to the deliberation room to decide on the challenge. As a result, the blogger’s defense petition was not granted.
Veteran Ignat Artemenko himself refused to further participate in the process, due to the fact that he felt bad at the last meeting, as well as because of the insults at him from Navalny.
The blogger is accused of deliberately disseminating information discrediting the honor and dignity of Artemenko. During the first meeting, the blogger refused to admit his guilt. Navalny called the victim a traitor in the summer of 2020, criticizing the video in which the veteran supported the vote on amendments to the Russian Constitution.
Yelena Tsunaeva, co-chair of the central headquarters of the Immortal Regiment movement, believes that Navalny has offended a whole generation by speaking about the veteran.