Russia jails advocate over war criticism
Sentenced to over 2 years in prison
A Moscow court sentenced the co-chair of Memorial, the Russian rights group that was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, to 2½ years in prison Tuesday for “discrediting” Russia’s military by voicing his opposition to the war in Ukraine.
Although the Kremlin ordered his group liquidated in late 2021, the co-chair, Oleg Orlov, 70, chose to stay in Russia after its invasion of Ukraine two years ago and has continued to criticize the government despite a climate of increasing repression.
In November 2022, Orlov, one of Russia’s most prominent rights campaigners, wrote an article headlined “They Wanted Fascism. They Got it,” in which he blamed President Vladimir Putin and the wider Russian public for the “mass murder of the Ukrainian people” and for dealing “a very heavy blow to Russia’s future.”
“The country that left behind communist totalitarianism 30 years ago has slipped back into totalitarianism, only now of the fascist variety,” he wrote in the publication, which was published online.
Nearly a year later, he was convicted of “repeated discrediting” of Russia’s armed forces. That charge carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, but he was punished only with a fine of about $1,600 because of mitigating factors including his age and his prominent public profile.
Prosecutors, accusing him of exhibiting “a motive of enmity and hatred toward military personnel,” requested that he be retried and given a three-year prison sentence. A Moscow court reheard the case, resulting in the sentencing Tuesday.
Orlov has denounced the charges as bogus. “I do not plead guilty, and the accusation is not clear to me,” he told the court during a hearing in mid-February. “The court, despite my requests, was unable to clearly explain the essence of the charges brought against me.”
Rights groups and the United States ambassador to Russia, Lynne M. Tracy, condemned the sentence. “In previous times his efforts have been awarded at the highest levels,” Tracy said in a statement posted on the embassy’s website. “In today’s Russia he is being locked away for them.”
Since Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine two years ago, repression has been on the rise in Russia. There are hundreds of political prisoners in the country, according to Memorial, Orlov’s organization, which was founded during the fall of the Soviet Union to document the abuses of the Stalin regime.
Although Memorial’s headquarters in central Moscow was shuttered and requisitioned by the state, the group has continued a modified form of its work in Russia and abroad.
More than 20,000 people have been detained for protesting the war, including 400 since the death of Russia’s main opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, was announced this month.