A blogger from Tajikistan Ruslan Bobiev, who posted on social networks a photo with a girl in front of the St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, was detained on Thursday along with his companion.
In social networks, the blogger's act caused a wave of negative comments and calls for deportation.
Bobiev on September 29 published photos on his Instagram, in one of which a girl in a police jacket sits down on his haunches in front of him, legs wide apart. The photo was accompanied by the caption: “The Labor Code is not a Criminal Code, and it can be violated.”
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Currently, Bobiev's account has been deleted, and he and the devshuk who participated in the photo shoot were detained.
On Thursday evening, Moscow police announced the arrest of “two citizens who made and disseminated provocative photographs on the Internet.”
With regard to the detainees, protocols were drawn up under an administrative article on disobedience to a police officer, and against a girl – under an article on illegal wearing of a police uniform.
In relation to the blogger, a protocol was also drawn up under the article on violation of the regime of stay in Russia, the department reported.
In a video of Bobiev's interrogation published by the Russian media, he says that he is engaged in “pranks”, for which he was previously taken to the police. He calls himself unemployed, says that he has 100 thousand subscribers on Instagram, but the account has been blocked.
Bobiev also apologizes several times on the recording.
In August, the Russian Interior Ministry announced that it was undesirable for comedian Idrak Mirzalizade, who is a citizen of Belarus and a native of Azerbaijan, to stay in the country. Prior to that, he served 10 days of administrative arrest on charges of inciting hatred over a joke.
This decision was made after the comedian “in his public speech allowed expressions that incite hatred and enmity towards persons of Russian nationality, humiliating their human dignity,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs explained then.
On August 9, Mirzalizade was arrested for 10 days on charges of inciting hatred (Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation) because of a joke that sounded on the YouTube show “Razgony”. In the comedian's story about how he was looking for housing and throwing out a dirty mattress from a rented apartment, the prosecutor's office found signs of humiliation of a group of people based on ethnicity.
The comedian did not admit his guilt. In court, Mirzalizade said that his speech was aimed at ridiculing xenophobia, but he apologized to people who might be offended by his jokes. On September 16, the Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow suspended the decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the undesirability of the comedian's stay in Russia.
