The son of Boris Gryzlov, the chairman of the Supreme Council of United Russia, Dmitry Gryzlov, said that he had “prayed out of old memory” in defense of the human rights activist, head of the Free Buryatia Foundation, Alexandra Garmazhapova. According to him, thanks to his patronage, Garmazhapova was not recognized as a "foreign agent."
“By the way, I took care of the old memory, so that you would not be touched. We must pay tribute to the promise kept. You won’t become a foreign agent,” he wrote to Garmazhapova on Facebook. So Gryzlov Jr. responded to the proposal of the human rights activist and BBC journalist Andrei Zakharov to go to the front. According to her, earlier Gryzlov himself promised her to go to the front in a telephone conversation.
Dmitry Gryzlov, like his father, is a member of United Russia, whose website states that he is Vice-Rector for Public Relations of the National Open Institute of Russia (St. Petersburg), the institute was founded by the Gryzlov family. In May, he admitted that he was writing denunciations against colleagues whom he considered "traitors" to the motherland. The statements concerned those who criticized the clip about Russia's actions on the territory of Ukraine and the Russian army. Fontanka wrote about it.
“It’s great to know that you had traitors to the Motherland and foreign agents among your “friends”, while I have two of them on the list, statements were written against them in the UK. One has been in Europe for a long time, Aleksey Lushnikov; the other, apparently, will also be dumped there by this “political scientist” Aleksey Shustov. I think that both should be brought under two articles. Although I am more than sure that the Investigative Committee and its leader Bastrykin will figure it out and impose a fair punishment for these two Anglo-Saxon accomplices, who, through their publications on social networks, discredit the work of the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”
When commentators noted that the system works differently, and the court assigns punishment, Gryzlov said that the court only determines whether a person is guilty or not, but the prosecutor proposes punishment.
At the same time, Gryzlov himself starred in the video, which his colleagues did not like. In the video called “We are people”, he plays the role of a TV presenter who announces the release of a news program, then musicians Sergey Rogozhin and Viktor Saltykov appear at the microphones and start singing, footage from the Donbass is shown against the background of the song. The clip ends with Gryzlov's phrase: "Work, brothers."
