According to the publication, the manuals explain that the "statement of fact" regarding the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation refers to the article about "spreading deliberately false information", and the "negative opinion" about the actions of the army refers to the article about discrediting the army
MOSCOW, August 2. /tass/. The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation has prepared two methodological manuals for investigators and judges, which explain that the "statement of fact" regarding the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation refers to the article on "dissemination of deliberately false information", and the "negative opinion" about the actions of the army refers to the article on discrediting the army. This was reported on Tuesday by the newspaper Kommersant with reference to copies of the Ministry of Justice's manuals.
It is clarified that copies of the manuals were provided to the publication by the senior partner of the Network Freedoms project, lawyer Stanislav Seleznev. In particular, the first document explains how to conduct a forensic linguistic examination in cases of "public dissemination of deliberately false information" about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The second document is devoted to the "comprehensive psychological and linguistic expertise" of materials on the "public discrediting of the use" of the armed forces. As Seleznev notes, both manuals have already been sent to all regional departments of the Ministry of Justice.
As explained in the manual, if "information is submitted in the form of statements about facts and events," then this "allows the law enforcement officer to establish its falsity or reliability." At the same time, the authors of the manual indicate that the object of expertise is a "message" that can be examined "only taking into account the context of its placement and the communicative situation." In particular, they emphasize that "the solution of issues related to the establishment of deliberately false information, the qualification of information as fake, the identification of signs of fake information, as well as the verification of information for compliance with reality go beyond the special knowledge of the expert linguist." The main task of the examination is to establish the method of submission of the information contained in the material."
The compilers of the explanations clarify that if a person expressed not a statement, but an "opinion" or gave an "assessment" about the fact of the use of the Russian Armed Forces, then we are talking about "discrediting". In this case, the object of the examination is also a "message", but the task becomes "to establish the type of extremist meaning expressed in the material". The Ministry of Justice suggests three types of use of such extremist meanings: discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, discrediting the exercise of their powers by state authorities in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, and inducing (including in the form of a call) to prevent the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. According to the agency, discrediting should be understood as deliberate actions aimed at undermining confidence in state authorities, belittling their authority. "The materials should contain a discussion of the purposes of using the Armed Forces of Russia, which is the justification for their negative assessment, thereby there should be an incentive to an opinion, that is, convincing the addressee of the correctness of such an assessment," the text says.
New article
According to the adopted law, the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was supplemented with Article 207.3 "Public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation". It provides for imprisonment for up to three years or a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles. At the same time, such a violation of the law committed using official position, out of self-interest, motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred or enmity, is punishable by imprisonment up to 10 years or a fine of up to 5 million rubles. If the fake information entailed serious consequences, the term of imprisonment will be from 10 to 15 years.
