The Oktyabrsky District Court of Ivanovo, due to the death of the defendant, terminated the criminal case under the “Dada” article and under the article about “discrediting” the army against candidate of medical sciences Olga Nazarenko. This was reported by the press service of the regional courts.
The court release states that the state prosecutor and Nazarenko’s husband did not object to the termination of the criminal case on non-rehabilitative grounds. The activist's death became known in October. She died in intensive care after being seriously injured due to a fall from a tree.
Olga Nazarenko has taught at the Ivanovo Medical Academy since 2000, most recently she was an associate professor at the Department of Pharmacology. In October 2022, she was suspended from work at the request of the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which sent a letter to the academy.
The teacher said that she had been going on pickets since 2018 — in support of the Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, who was then on a hunger strike, and other political prisoners . She took part in the protest on February 24, 2022 and subsequently held anti-war pickets.
After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, three protocols were drawn up against Nazarenko for violating the legislation on rallies (20.2 Code of Administrative Offenses) and one about “discrediting” the army (20.3.3 Code of Administrative Offenses). In total, she was given fines of 260 thousand rubles and 260 hours of compulsory work. Nazarenko, as noted by OVD-Info, worked by cleaning the territory of a children's park and caring for animals in the zoo.
Administrative penalties that came into force made it possible to initiate criminal cases against the assistant professor under the “Dada” article in the fall of 2022 about repeated violations of the legislation on rallies (212.1 of the Criminal Code) and under the article on “discrediting” the army (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code). The reasons were Nazarenko’s pickets and anti-war leaflets, which, according to investigators, she posted.
“Now it’s difficult for me to make plans for the future,” Olga Nazarenko told the OVD-Info project. in October 2023. “If the sentence is not connected with a real term, then, of course, I will have to look for a new job that has nothing to do with teaching. But for some reason I am sure that I will most likely get a prison sentence for my anti-war position.”