(Reuters) – Russia’s government prolonged support to a legislative amendment that might classify maps that dispute the country’s official “territorial integrity” as punishable extremist materials, the state-owned TASS news agency reported on Sunday.
The amendment to Russia’s anti-extremism laws stipulates that “cartographic and other documents and pictures that dispute the territorial integrity of Russia” will likely be classified as extremist materials, the agency reported.
Russia’s sweepingly ambiguous anti-extremism laws — it applies to non secular organizations, journalists and their materials, in addition to the activity of companies, amongst others – has allowed the Kremlin to tighten its grip on opponents.
The brand new amendment, TASS reports without citing sources, emerged after its authors identified that some maps distributed in Russia dispute the “territorial affiliation” of the Crimean Peninsula and the Kuril Islands.
Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 – a move rejected by Ukraine and plenty of countries as illegal. Ukrainians and their government have since often objected to world maps showing Crimea as a part of Russia’s territory.
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Russia and Japan haven’t formally ended World War Two hostilities due to their standoff over a gaggle of islands just off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. The Soviet Union seized those islands – known in Russia because the Kurils and in Japan because the Northern Territories – at the top of the war.
The amendment have to be proposed to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, and after a review undergo three readings. It’s then sent to the Federation Council, the upper house, and to President Vladimir Putin for signing.
Individually, Russian politicians began debating punishment for Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine and who, as the previous Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, “wish their fatherland to perish.”
Medvedev, probably the most forthright allies of Putin, said that “in times of war,” there are special rules that allow to cope with traitors.
“In times of war, there have all the time been such special rules,” Medvedev said on the Telegram messaging app. “And quiet groups of impeccably inconspicuous individuals who effectively execute the principles.”
Medvedev’s rhetoric has change into increasingly vitriolic for the reason that war in Ukraine began, though his published views sometimes chime with considering at the highest levels of the Kremlin elite.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and by Lidia Kelly; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Paul Simao)
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