Russian opponent Andrei Pivovarov was sentenced to four years in prison on Friday, more than a year after his arrest, a judicial steamroller carrying away the very last figures of the Russian opposition in recent weeks.
Mr. Pivovarov was convicted, based on Facebook posts, of campaigning for a banned organization.
“Andrei Pivovarov was sentenced to four years in a penal colony with a ban on socio-political activities for a period of eight years,” his team wrote on the Twitter account in his name.
“After examining the documents in the file, examining the numerous admissible pieces of evidence presented by the parties, the court came to the conclusion that the guilt of the accused was proven”, indicated the press service of the court, quoted by the TASS agency.
On May 31, 2021, the security forces had extricated Mr. Pivovarov from a plane ready to take off from Saint Petersburg to Warsaw.
A few days earlier, he had announced the self-dissolution of his organization Otkritaïa Rossia (Open Russia), linked to the ex-oligarch and exiled opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who himself had spent years in prison in Russia.
Mr. Pivovarov had announced that he would dissolve his movement because he expected it to be classified as “undesirable”, which exposed activists, members and employees to legal proceedings.
After his arrest, he was transferred to a prison in southern Russia, in Krasnodar, where he was tried.
“This case against me is pure revenge because of my opinions, my political activities,” the 40-year-old opponent said on the last day of his trial, July 11, denouncing the political prosecution of critics of Vladimir Putin.
“Russia will be free”
Saying he was certain that day that he would receive a prison sentence, he had nevertheless declared that he had “no doubt that in the end, Russia will be free. Even if it is a long road”.
From his cell, he campaigned in the September 2021 legislative elections, with the slogan “stronger than fear”, his team presenting him as the “handcuffed candidate”.
His arrest came in the midst of a wave of repression targeting opposition organizations as the legislative elections approached. Shortly after his imprisonment, all the structures of the number 1 opponent in the Kremlin, Alexeï Navalny, had been banned for extremism.
Mr. Navalny was already in prison, and many of his executives subsequently chose exile in the face of the multiplication of legal actions against them.
This repression has been further accentuated since February 24, when Vladimir Putin’s Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine.
Soon, heavy prison sentences were introduced for any criticism of the Russian military. In the aftermath, renowned opponents and ordinary citizens were arrested and imprisoned for having denounced the Russian assault against its neighbor or abuses by Russian forces.
The opponents Ilia Iachine and Vladimir Kara-Mourza but also ordinary citizens have already been imprisoned for such reasons pending their trial.
A Moscow elected official, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to seven years in prison last week for denouncing the assault on Ukraine.
The biggest social networks and a host of Russian and foreign media have also been blocked in Russia.
On Friday again, the Russian authorities classified the Bellingcat and The Insider investigation sites as “undesirable”, judging that they represented “a threat to the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation”.
These sites had published investigations identifying and accusing Russian agents of the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in August 2020. The latter had escaped death and was arrested upon his return in early 2021 from convalescence in Germany.