"Thaw, is this you?" Experts wonder why Putin imposed a veto over the law on the responsibility of the media for spreading fake news

The news that has inspired many citizens opposed to the Russian government is being discussed today on social networks: Putin set a veto on the law on the responsibility of the media for spreading fakes. The document has been sent for reconsideration, and, apparently, the State Duma of the next convocation will deal with this. Experts have calculated that for the first time in five years, Putin returned a law approved by the Federation Council for revision to the State Duma. This law was written for the elections and sharply toughened the responsibility of the media for reprints. The document said that the media will be fully responsible for quotes from other publications if their chief editors cannot be found and punished. Some analysts believe that the first deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Administration, Alexei Gromov, who, as you know, oversees the work of state media in the Kremlin, advised Putin to make such an extraordinary decision.

Journalist Dmitry Kolezev commented on this decision:

“Vladimir Putin vetoed a very strange bill on the responsibility of the media for citing other media in the event that the editor-in-chief of the original source could not be identified. I wrote about this dubious bill, which appeared as amendments to a completely different legislative initiative (the practice of such amendments generally needs to be eliminated, this is a clear abuse of the procedure). The interpretations of this bill were contradictory, as far as I remember, the experts did not come to a consensus as to why this norm is needed and what it will actually change. Some believed that nothing would change at all.

A presidential veto on a bill is a rare phenomenon, and when imposed on such a vague initiative, it becomes something completely mysterious. That is, the bill, of course, was bad, perhaps simply meaningless, but why was it not stopped at the stage of the State Duma or the Federation Council, and brought to the attention of the president? We are waiting for the insiders to tell about it ... "

The Telegram channel Svoi da Nashi considers this news to be "news that is difficult to overestimate":

The President used a veto on the adopted law on the responsibility of the media for the dissemination of fakes.

And now colleagues, like us, who are professionally involved in rulemaking, remember: when was the last time President Putin used the veto?

So, if during his first term, in 2000-2003, when a semblance of public policy still existed in the country and in a separate lower house of parliament, the President rejected a total of 41 laws.

Of the 1,087 laws passed by the Duma of the 4th convocation (2004-2007), Putin rejected only 10 laws.

Then, after the triumphant return to office and the final cleansing of the political space, the cases of the presidential veto became literally isolated.

Of the nearly 2,200 laws passed by the State Duma of the 6th convocation (2011-2016), Putin rejected only one, which amended the Skolkovo law.

The last veto that we remember - on December 29, 2016, Putin rejected the law on the creation of an electronic database "Contingent of students"

And now, 5 years later, (exactly after the meeting with Biden, but this is a pure coincidence) veto on a very controversial law on the activities of the media in emergency situations and in the fight against terrorism.

This should be quoted:

"According to Vladimir Putin, the legal innovations proposed by the Federal Law do not fully correspond to the current situation in the fight against terrorism and do not solve the problem of ensuring the safety of citizens during counter-terrorist operations http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/27752"...

Thaw, darling, is this you?!"