Stories about journalists being beaten, journalists fired because of censorship, pressure on journalists, and smashed cameras—these are all just part of our everyday life.
A journalist was filming something, thugs rushed in (under police protection), punched the journalist in the face, and smashed the camera—such an ordinary occurrence that hardly anyone even bothers demanding a criminal case be opened.
And the article "Obstruction of the lawful activities of journalists" is so exotic and so rarely applied that you have to spend time just to find examples of it being used.
And yet today, the head (!) of the department for investigating especially (!) important (!) cases at the Novosibirsk Investigative Committee finally struck a decisive blow against violations of journalists’ rights and opened a case on precisely those grounds.
Against Leonid Volkov:
It’s astonishing—can you imagine how badly the crooks in the presidential administration want a case opened against Volkov, and how little the crooks under Bastrykin (head of Russia’s Investigative Committee) actually have on Leonid, yet they still want to please their masters so much that they’re fabricating a case out of material like this?
That article carries a sentence of up to six years in prison, by the way.
P.S. Here’s what journalists themselves are writing about it: