Rights defenders and oppositionists quarrel on Sobchak's visit to Grozny

After Ksenia Sobchak’s picket in defence of Oyub Titiev, held by her in Grozny, users of social networks, including well-known oppositionists, rights defenders and journalists, diverged about the reasons for the presidential candidate, and on whether her arrival in Grozny was a PR act.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on January 28, presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak held a solo picket in Grozny with the demand to release Oyub Titiev, the head of the Chechen office of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial". After the picket, several young people started shouting insults addressed to Ksenia Sobchak and demanded from her to leave Grozny.

Ksenia’s visit to Chechnya had to do with the upcoming election and her intention to "stage a pre-election show there," said Victor Shenderovich, a Russian writer and a radio presenter.

"To fly into Ramzan Kadyrov’s fiefdom and stage a pre-election show there, in order to earn points in a win-win moral field, is a vulgarity, to my taste, beyond the reach even by our standards," Victor Shenderovich commented on January 29 on his Facebook page.

His viewpoint was supported by Leonid Gozman, a politician and the president of the public movement "Union of Right-Wing Forces". According to his version, Ms Sobchak’s solo picket in Grozny "was the height of hypocrisy and lies."

In his turn, Igor Kalyapin, a member of the Council on Human Rights and Development of Civil Society Institutions under the President of Russia and the head of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), spoke out in defence of Ksenia Sobchak.

"I’ll, perhaps, also say a few words about Ksenia's trip to Grozny and her picket in Titiev’s defence... They say that Sobchak did it for the sake of her PR... So, I did not give a damn what she did it for. She did a good deed,” Igor Kalyapin wrote today on his Facebook page.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.