(Moscow) A former Moscow municipal deputy, Alexeï Gorinov, sentenced to seven years in prison for having denounced the attack in Ukraine, has disappeared from his prison, his supporters reported on Friday, who are concerned about the deterioration of his condition health.
“Alexei Gorinov’s lawyers have been trying all week to get certain information about his health and whereabouts. We can say that Alexei is not in penal colony No. 2 in Pokrov,” his support group said.
“We assume and hope that Alexei Gorinov was transferred to the hospital, because he absolutely needs to receive hospital care,” the group continued in a message on Telegram.
Alexei Gorinov, 62, is serving his sentence in Pokrov, in the Vladimir region, about 200 km east of Moscow.
On December 8, still according to his supporters, one of his lawyers was able to visit him and noted that he was in a “very poor state of health” and no longer even had the strength to “stand on a chair and talk.”
His supporters point out that he was then suffering from bronchitis, had “trouble breathing” and was deprived of his medication and care, while he has had chronic lung difficulties since the removal of part of a from his lungs during an operation in 2016.
In July 2022, Alexei Gorinov became the first opponent to be sentenced for “disseminating false information” about the Russian army, under a new law passed a few weeks earlier to punish those denouncing the conflict.
Since then, hundreds of other people, recognized activists or anonymous, have been imprisoned for the same reason. The main figures of the Russian opposition are in prison or in exile abroad.
A lawyer by training, Mr. Gorinov was arrested for condemning Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine where “children are dying every day” during a meeting of his local municipal assembly in March 2022.
Since this fall, he has been the target of another criminal case, punishable by five years in prison, in which he is accused of having wanted to “justify terrorist acts” during a conversation with other detainees in prison.