Astrakhan deputy fined for post with Hitler's quote

A court in Astrakhan has fined Oleg Shein, a deputy of the Regional Duma, treating his post with a quote from Hitler's book as distribution of extremist materials. The deputy himself has treated the court ruling as illegal and pointed out that the court had disregarded the context of his post.

The Kirov District Court of Astrakhan has found Shein guilty under the article "Production and distribution of extremist materials".

The reason for the administrative prosecution was the post placed in Shein's Telegram channel, in which he quoted the words of "the frontline priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Maxim Serpitsky", who compared foreign workers to worms. There, Shein also cited a quote from the book "Mein Kampf", in which Hitler compares Jews to parasites.

The deputy has noted that in the law on combating extremist activities, such activities include "justification or substantiation of racial and national superiority, and not criticism of fascism, not an explanation of what it is, and not anti-fascist propaganda".

He has noted that when making the ruling, the context of his statements was not taken into account, as required by the law.

"Obviously, in my case, if I quote the 'Mein Kampf', I don't do it in the context of 'Hitler was right', but on the contrary: 'Look, today there are those who incite ethnic hatred, compare people to worms just because these people are of a different ethnicity or religion, or citizenship,'" he has explained.