We are launching a fund for the legal defence of Mikhail Balabanov. We need to raise €4600
Twenty-year-old Mikhail Balabanov was detained almost a year ago. The FSB accused him of preparing to firebomb the military recruitment center at Nevinnomyssk. We consider the case against Balabanov to be a provocation by the Russian security services.
The investigating officers claim that Balabanov entered a conspiracy with a representative of Ukrainian intelligence services. And indeed, Mikhail was contacted by someone with the codename “Ben”, claiming to be a GUR [Ukrainian intelligence] operative. Mikhail wanted to avoid being conscripted, and “Ben” promised to arrange this, but in return asked Balabanov to undertake a number of “tasks”. These included making a video recording of conscripts, and of military equipment at the recruitment center’s premises.
When Mikhail arrived at the recruitment center, the security services were waiting there for him. Subsequently, during a search of his home, they “found” a Molotov cocktail. Balabanov has been accused of “preparation of a terrorist act”, and faces the threat of 10 years’ imprisonment.
We believe that it was FSB officers who were corresponding with Mikhail, taking advantage of the fact that he did not want to take part in the attack on Ukraine.
We are starting a fund to pay for Mikhail’s legal representation in court. To continue to defend Mikhail, we need to collect €4600.
✊We urge you to give Mikhail Balabanov whatever support you can euros, cryptocurrency or a repost!
🪙PayPal:[email protected] (please specify, “for Balabanov”, if possible euros are the preferred currency)
🥷Cryptocurrencies (please inform us by email to [email protected] if you send cryptocurrency to support Mikhail)
We are launching a fund for the legal defence of Mikhail Balabanov. We need to raise €4600
Twenty-year-old Mikhail Balabanov was detained almost a year ago. The FSB accused him of preparing to firebomb the military recruitment center at Nevinnomyssk. We consider the case against Balabanov to be a provocation by the Russian security services.
The investigating officers claim that Balabanov entered a conspiracy with a representative of Ukrainian intelligence services. And indeed, Mikhail was contacted by someone with the codename “Ben”, claiming to be a GUR [Ukrainian intelligence] operative. Mikhail wanted to avoid being conscripted, and “Ben” promised to arrange this, but in return asked Balabanov to undertake a number of “tasks”. These included making a video recording of conscripts, and of military equipment at the recruitment center’s premises.
When Mikhail arrived at the recruitment center, the security services were waiting there for him. Subsequently, during a search of his home, they “found” a Molotov cocktail. Balabanov has been accused of “preparation of a terrorist act”, and faces the threat of 10 years’ imprisonment.
We believe that it was FSB officers who were corresponding with Mikhail, taking advantage of the fact that he did not want to take part in the attack on Ukraine.
We are starting a fund to pay for Mikhail’s legal representation in court. To continue to defend Mikhail, we need to collect €4600.
✊We urge you to give Mikhail Balabanov whatever support you can euros, cryptocurrency or a repost!
🪙PayPal:[email protected] (please specify, “for Balabanov”, if possible euros are the preferred currency)
🥷Cryptocurrencies (please inform us by email to [email protected] if you send cryptocurrency to support Mikhail)
Telegram was founded in 2013 by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov. That hurt tech stocks. For the past few weeks, the 10-year yield has traded between 1.72% and 2%, as traders moved into the bond for safety when Russia headlines were ugly—and out of it when headlines improved. Now, the yield is touching its pandemic-era high. If the yield breaks above that level, that could signal that it’s on a sustainable path higher. Higher long-dated bond yields make future profits less valuable—and many tech companies are valued on the basis of profits forecast for many years in the future. On February 27th, Durov posted that Channels were becoming a source of unverified information and that the company lacks the ability to check on their veracity. He urged users to be mistrustful of the things shared on Channels, and initially threatened to block the feature in the countries involved for the length of the war, saying that he didn’t want Telegram to be used to aggravate conflict or incite ethnic hatred. He did, however, walk back this plan when it became clear that they had also become a vital communications tool for Ukrainian officials and citizens to help coordinate their resistance and evacuations. One thing that Telegram now offers to all users is the ability to “disappear” messages or set remote deletion deadlines. That enables users to have much more control over how long people can access what you’re sending them. Given that Russian law enforcement officials are reportedly (via Insider) stopping people in the street and demanding to read their text messages, this could be vital to protect individuals from reprisals. The company maintains that it cannot act against individual or group chats, which are “private amongst their participants,” but it will respond to requests in relation to sticker sets, channels and bots which are publicly available. During the invasion of Ukraine, Pavel Durov has wrestled with this issue a lot more prominently than he has before. Channels like Donbass Insider and Bellum Acta, as reported by Foreign Policy, started pumping out pro-Russian propaganda as the invasion began. So much so that the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council issued a statement labeling which accounts are Russian-backed. Ukrainian officials, in potential violation of the Geneva Convention, have shared imagery of dead and captured Russian soldiers on the platform.
from es
