Former Georgian Interior Ministry official Lasha Shergelashvili, who served as the head of the Armaments Department of the Special Operations Directorate, said on Formula TV that a banned substance was used to suppress a protest outside the Central Election Commission in 2020. When asked if he had any suspicions, he replied that he "knew for sure that it was used" as he was there at the time.
In recent days, calls have been actively disseminated on the Internet among Muslims to go to a rally on July 21. The reason was the OMON raids in religious communities that took place in the Moscow region.
No rallies and other actions are coordinated or supported by the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Russian Federation and the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Moscow, as Ildar Alyautdinov, head of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Moscow, said. According to him, any public events of this kind are "another provocation, behind which are external forces aimed at splitting our state from the inside." He also noted that "in today's realities, such provocations are extremely destructive for our country and in no way contribute to resolving the issue."
Alyautdinov stressed that the DUM of Moscow condemns the actions of OMON officers and considers their behavior unacceptable. Especially when believers perform religious worship and in no way pose a danger. In this regard, a number of official letters were sent to various structures with a request to clarify the cause of the incident and conduct an audit.
Recall that lately the security forces twice broke into the mosques of the cities of Kotelniki and Dzerzhinsky in shoes. This happened during prayer. Those who came behaved rudely and insulted the parishioners.