12 June: Police detain Oleg Alexeev during an anti-corruption protest in the city centre of Kaliningrad, Russia. (c) Private.Two weeks ago, a third-year law student In Kaliningrad, at the western end of Russia, learned he was being expelled from his university. The management of the Kant Baltic Federal University denied that Oleg Alexeev’s role in organising a public protest on 12 June had anything to do with their decision. However, the sequence of events that led to Alexeev’s expulsion suggests otherwise.
In early June, Alexeev, 21, filed a notification with the Kaliningrad municipality for a public protest in the city centre for 12 June, when major anti-corruption rallies were planned for numerous Russian cities. The authorities refused to authorise it and proposed another, remote site, which the organisers found unacceptable. An official from local anti-extremism police unit called Alexeev and invited him for a “conversation”. The young man refused.
On 8 June, the dean of law school, Oleg Zayachkovsky, asked to see Alexeev in his office. Zayachkovsky was joined by a police official and a supposed representative of the university’s “security department”. The two men refused to introduce themselves by name but listened closely as the dean berated the student and asked him questions about the planned rally. Then they joined the dean in trying to convince Alexeev to move the rally to a park on the outskirts of the city.
