Imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Gorinov was convicted again on Friday and given a three-year prison sentence for opposing Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
The three-day trial of Gorinov once again exposed Russia’s intolerance of dissent.
Gorinov, 63, is a former member of the Moscow City Council who is already serving a seven-year prison sentence for publicly criticizing the invasion, according to The Associated Press.
Based on his previous conviction and sentence, a court in the Russian region has ordered Vladimir Gorinov to serve a total of five years in a high-security prison. Russian independent news site Mediazona quoted Gorinov’s lawyer as saying the new sentence means he will spend an extra year behind bars compared to his previous sentence.
Gorinov was first convicted in July 2022, when a Moscow court sentenced him to seven years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian military during a city council meeting. Gorinov was accused of expressing skepticism about a children’s art competition in his constituency and saying that “children die every day” in Ukraine.
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He was the first known Russian to be jailed under a 2022 law that essentially bans any public statements about the war that differ from Moscow’s narrative.
In March 2023, Gorinov told The Associated Press from behind bars that “the authorities needed an example that they could show to others (of) an ordinary person, rather than a public figure.”
Last year, authorities launched a second case against Gorinov, his supporters said. It was alleged that he “justified terrorism” in conversations with his cellmates about the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, which Russia banned as a terrorist organization, and the 2022 Crimea Bridge explosion, which Moscow considered an act of terror.
Gorinov rejected the allegations against him on Wednesday, according to independent news site Mediazona, which quoted him as saying he only said the annexed Crimean peninsula was Ukrainian territory and called Azov part of the Ukrainian army.
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His trial began on Wednesday in the Vladimir region, where he is in prison due to his previous conviction. Courtroom photos published by Mediazona showed Gorinov in the defendant’s cage with a hand-drawn peace symbol on a piece of paper covering his prison badge and holding a handwritten sign that read: “Stop the killing. Let’s stop the war.”
“My fault is that, as a citizen of my country, I allowed this war to happen and was unable to stop it,” Gorinov said in his closing statement to the court, Mediazona reported.
“But I would like my guilt and responsibility to be shared with me by the organizers, participants, supporters of the war, as well as the persecutors of those who advocate peace,” Gorinov added. “I continue to live with the hope that this will one day happen. In the meantime, I ask those living in Ukraine and my fellow citizens who have suffered from the war to forgive me.”
According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that tracks political arrests, about 1,100 people have been the subject of criminal cases for their anti-war stance since the war against Ukraine began in February 2022. Nearly 350 of them are currently behind bars or involuntarily admitted to medical institutions.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Original article source: Imprisoned Kremlin critic re-convicted and given three-year prison term for opposing war in Ukraine
