A month ago, Yekaterina Logvinova was summoned for a conversation with the investigator as a witness in a criminal case on the rehabilitation of Nazism. During the conversation, law enforcement officers showed her screenshots from social networks, which depicted German officers from the Second World War and war films unknown to her. According to Ekaterina Logvinova, the investigator did not take a nondisclosure agreement from her.
Local human rights activist and State Duma candidate Vladimir Zhilkin told “7 × 7” that recently Polyakov has not been involved in activism and politics. According to the human rights activist, Andrey spent a month on a business trip in the Tambov region and only returned home on August 27. Zhilkin added that the day before the search, Polyakov helped him distribute an election campaign newspaper.
Polyakov’s lawyer Dmitry Patiakhin explained that in early August his client was summoned to the Investigative Committee to give explanations. Then the investigator announced a pre-investigation check under a criminal article on the rehabilitation of Nazism for the posts written by Polyakov about the Soviet partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and the blockade of Leningrad. According to the lawyer, Polyakov denies that he wrote the posts attributed to him. However, he agreed with the information published in them.
As Polyakov explained, the investigators were interested in the statement that there was no complete blockade of Leningrad, since there was a connection between the city and the “mainland” through the so-called “Road of Life”. The law enforcement agencies believe that the activist, referring to this opinion, disseminated deliberately false information. In addition, the claims of the investigation relate to the mention of the order of Joseph Stalin to leave the invaders only “scorched earth”, which doomed the local population to starvation.
Polyakov provided the investigator with extracts from sources, which indicated similar information. He added that he had no reason to doubt its reliability. The activist believes that the actions of the investigators are aimed at justifying Stalinism.
Andrey Polyakov headed the Tambov branch of the “Open Russia” movement (the authorities recognized the organization as undesirable, having achieved its liquidation). In the summer of 2020, he went to pickets in support of protesters against the arrest of the ex-governor of the Khabarovsk Territory Sergei Furgal. For this action, the activist was fined 10 thousand rubles. In August 2020, Polyakov was going to lay flowers at the monument to the participants in the peasant Antonov uprising during the Civil War. But on the day of the activist’s event harshly detained three in civilian clothes. Andrey Polyakov was charged with petty hooliganism (Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code) for allegedly swearing in a public place. The court arrested him for five days. After that, an action was held in Tambov in support of Polyakov.
In 2018, the court sentenced Polyakov to six months of probation for insulting judge Natalia Barun, Novy Tambov reported.