“The main function of the state is to protect the safety of citizens, judges should know about this from lectures on the history of state and law, and for the police this is a direct responsibility,” said Sergei Solovyov, vice-president of the Academy of Real Politics, commenting on media publications about the scandalous stories in Kaliningrad, when a young man first beat and then shot a 75-year-old woman with a pump-action shotgun, but as a result “got off” with only small fines.
According to the political scientist, statistics show that in Russia there is a long overdue need to make changes to legislation, as well as to supervisory activities, so that the flow of such “everyday” cases does not increase due to too lenient punishments for the perpetrators of such incidents.
“It’s time to stop moving the dial back to the 90s with their lawlessness and, finally, to bring order to the law enforcement practice of Russian legislation relating to the protection of the health and property of citizens of the Russian Federation. A 5 thousand fine for an attack on a person’s health, and possibly life, is an outrage against common sense,” Sergei Solovyov is convinced.
As the media reported, Maxim Lomonosov, who arrived with his family in the Kaliningrad region, behaved provocatively with his neighbors in an apartment building: he would either cut the television cable, or turn off the electricity in the building, or start “renovating” his apartment by placing a toilet above the kitchen of the neighbors below. Police representatives did not respond to statements from residents of the house. And it all ended with an attack on an elderly woman in response to a remark on her part. “Maxim Lomonosov, having grabbed and held the pensioner by the hair from behind, deliberately struck her at least two blows with his fist in the area of the frontotemporal part of the head, as well as at least one blow with his fist to the left hand, with which the woman was covering her face,” the materials say affairs. Then he hit the victim in the shoulder and pushed her towards the concrete porch, falling on which she hit her temple on the concrete step. Doctors recorded a closed craniocerebral injury.
While the police and court proceedings were ongoing, Lomonosov shot the pensioner from the window with rubber bullets from a pump-action shotgun. Fortunately, the bullets did not hit the head, but hit the shoulder and leg. In court, the shooter was first fined 10 thousand rubles, and then the fine was reduced to 5 thousand. In October 2023, the Supreme Court decided to transfer this criminal case for a new appeal hearing to the Zelenogradsky District Court of the Kaliningrad Region with a different composition of the court.
“What is noteworthy in this story is the fact that two branches of government at once, the executive and the judicial, treat the protection of the personal safety of Russian citizens, to put it mildly, carelessly,” says Sergei Solovyov. “For the police, these are small matters for which you will not receive a star or other benefits. Courts also classify hooliganism as “routine”, without attaching much importance to such cases. Therefore, legislators urgently need to tighten penalties for hooliganism, use of physical force and other illegal actions against citizens. In European countries, even for inflicting a public insult, the culprit can be given a real sentence, but in our country, even for injuring an elderly woman, you can get away with it. If we are unable to use laws to protect our own citizens from attackers, then, unfortunately, we cannot say that today we live in a rule-of-law state.”
Source: Rosbalt
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