"Why do this to us? I'm for the country and the president." The wife of a Yakut ONF activist spent three months suing police officers who prevented her from unfurling a banner in front of Putin's motorcade.
Founder of the Yakut ONF Mikael Zabolotny He calls himself a "law-abiding citizen" and still cannot understand why the police treated his wife Elena so rudely, when on June 18 she unfurled a small piece of paper in front of Putin's motorcade that read, "The family asks for help."
«My wife was attacked from both sides by about ten plainclothes men and ten patrol officers. And bystanders were also involved. They snatched the paper from her hands twice. But what kind of threat could one young mother of many children with an A4 sheet of paper in her hands possibly pose? resents Zabolotny.
According to him, his wife wanted to draw Putin's attention to the fact that their family was saddled with an allegedly unjustified debt of 35 million rubles (Zabolotny claims that this debt is from the pro-government television channel Almaz, which he once headed).
After the failed picket, the Zabolotnys accused the police of abuse of power and appealed to the Investigative Committee.
«Why do this to us? I'm for the country and the president, — the ONF activist is perplexed. — It’s completely unclear to me what this was, since I deeply respect our President Putin.”
He also doesn't understand why the police began to patrol his home, photograph his family members, persistently ring the intercom, and invite them to the station. He was even more outraged that his wife was detained on September 1st and kept in a cell overnight for disobeying a police officer's orders (because of this, she was unable to prepare her children for Knowledge Day and subsequently spent several more days in the hospital).
Even the city court agreed that the police were wrong: it returned the case “due to numerous violations.”
Now Zabolotny is demanding that a criminal case be opened against the security forces who "seized and forcibly detained" his wife.
On the day of Putin's visit to Yakutsk, traffic was completely blocked on some streets and highways, causing people stood in traffic jams for several hours.
Photo: Mikael Zabolotny