According to Timur Khutov, Head of Criminal Law Practice, BMS Law Firm, they have converted practice used before the law was enacted in relation to photographing, video recordings
and film recordings into a rule of law, and added online broadcasting to the
list.

The expert believes that there is a grain of truth to it. “Essentially, they have prohibited online broadcasting without the permission of a court. And broadcasting in the absence of such permission is treated as violation of the established legal process”.

Timur Khutov explained that these provisions will allow to remove “undesirable” journalists from a courtroom, and to subjectively decide what publications are allowed to conduct broadcasting. “The first to suffer will be anti-establishment mass media which specialize in broadcasting court hearings”, the expert noted. He also clarified that an illegal refusal may be challenged, however, he added, as evidenced by the prevailing court practice, this measure is not efficient, since judges’ actions are extremely rarely recognized to be illegitimate.