Russian prosecutors fined a top official at the Yeltsin Center, the library and cultural center dedicated to the late Russian president, after she re-posted an anti-war message on social media.
A district court in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg ordered Lyudmila Telen, the center’s first deputy director, to pay a fine of 45,000 rubles ($560). The court on August 20 ruled she had “discredited the Russian armed forces” under a law passed shortly after Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
According to the court, Telen reposted on Facebook a Russian-language image that read “No To War” on February 25, 2022, the day after the start of the invasion. The image was a repost from Yeltsin’s elder daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko.
According to the local news site 66.ru, Dyachenko herself has not been fined or punished for the original post, which had circulated widely among many Russian liberals who were shocked by the invasion.
Based in Yekaterinburg, the Yeltsin Center is modeled on US presidential libraries and is the official nongovernment repository of archival materials related to Yeltsin, who died in 2007.
Vladimir Putin, whom Yeltsin handpicked as his successor in 1999, has largely avoided maligning Yeltsin, whose tenure in the 1990s as Russia’s first independent president was marked by economic chaos.
Putin’s popularity stems in large part from the prosperity that Russia saw in the 2000s, fueled by oil and gas revenues, and the perception that Yeltsin was too weak to stand up to Western pressure.
Russian authorities have also avoided targeting or maligning Yeltsin’s surviving family members, including his 93-year-old widow, Naina, and his children.
That includes Dyachenko, who along with her husband, Valentin Yumashev, were powerful political figures in the Yeltsin administration, and were among those who initially backed Putin in the waning months of Yeltsin’s presidency. Both have largely stayed out of public view in recent years.
The Yeltsin Center, however, has come under scrutiny since the Ukraine invasion.
Russian nationalist figures have criticized the center for some of the book readings and other cultural events it has hosted.
Last year, the center canceled a planned book talk by Nina Khrushcheva, a US-based historian who is the granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. One lawmaker called the book reading “an exhibition of Russophobia.”
Telen, a former journalist who previously worked as web editor for RFE/RL’s Russian Service, could not be reached for comment.
A spokesman for the Yeltsin Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the court ruling.
