Words carry more and more weight in Russia. A Moscow municipal elected official, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to seven years in prison for denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Friday July 8, in the midst of a wave of repression to silence any criticism of the offensive decided by Vladimir Putin. “All efforts of civil society must serve to end the war and lead to the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory”he said in particular last March.
The judge found the 60-year-old man guilty of “disseminated clearly false information” on the Russian army using “his official functions” and to have done so as part of an organized group motivated by “political hatred”. “The recovery of the accused is impossible without a penalty of deprivation of liberty”, estimated the magistrate before condemning him to seven years of detention in a penal colony. Before she pronounced this sentence, the public of the trial applauded the accused, leading to the expulsion from the room of the spectators who had come to support him.
Shortly before sentencing, standing in the glass cage reserved for the accused, the gray-haired man, his face tense and his gaze piercing, held before the cameras a sheet crossed out with the words: “Do you still need this war?”. The day before, during his trial, Alexei Gorinov had insisted on being “against all wars”pointing out that his father was “disabled income from World War II”. He also cited the names of Ukrainian towns like Boutcha where Russian forces are accused of war crimes, abuses that Russian authorities say are lies or staged.
Trained as a lawyer, Alexeï Gorinov was arrested in April for having denounced the March 15 “war” and “aggression” of Moscow against Ukraine, during a meeting of its municipal district assembly. The session was filmed and broadcast on YouTube, which, for the court, constitutes aggravating circumstances. One of Alexei Gorinov’s colleagues, Elena Kotenochkina, is accused of the same facts, according to the Mediazona site (in Russian), who attended the hearing. But she is not judged because she fled Russia, like many militants since the beginning of the war.
Alexei Gorinov is the first opponent, an elected official moreover, to receive a prison sentence for his positions against Russian intervention in Ukraine, but other activists are currently awaiting trial in detention. Since February 24, when Russian forces entered Ukraine, the authorities have passed several laws to impose heavy penalties on those who publicly condemn the attack, banning the use of the words “war” and “invasion”. During the verdict, the judge declared that Alexei Gorinov’s remarks did not comply with the official briefings of the Ministry of Defense.
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