Russia wants to jail opposition activists, anti-war officials

Prosecutors are asking for the sentence of Andrei Pivovarov, the former head of Russia’s Open Organization, for “directing an unpopular organization,” according to his lawyer, Sergei Badamshin. years in prison, which is a criminal offence under a 2015 law.

Pivovarov rejected the charges, noting at a court hearing that the criminal case was opened two days after the Russian Open closed. The group disbanded after being designated “undesirable” in an attempt to protect members from prosecution.

Pivovarov disembarks from a plane bound for Warsaw at St Petersburg Airport in May 2021. He was taken to the southern city of Krasnodar, where he was accused of supporting a local candidate on behalf of an “undesirable” group. The criminal charges are based on his social media posts supporting independent candidates in Krasnodar municipal elections.

Attorney Badam Shin said prosecutors also asked for his client to be barred from serving for eight years.

Also on Thursday, a Russian prosecutor called for a seven-year prison sentence for a Moscow city council member who spoke out against Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Alexei Gorinov, detained in April, is the first elected Russian representative to face jail for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian military, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment.

A recording of Gorinov criticizing Moscow’s military operations in Ukraine at a city council meeting in March is now available on YouTube. The video shows him expressing doubts about a planned children’s art competition in his constituency as Ukraine “has children dying every day”.

During a court hearing last month, Gorinov was photographed sitting in the defendant’s cage holding a sign reading “I am against war.”

Weeks after its troops entered Ukraine, Moscow effectively banned independent discussions of its Ukraine operations, including all references to it as a “war” or an “invasion.”

In another development on Thursday, Russia issued an arrest warrant for Ilya Krasilshchik, an outspoken tech executive and former publisher of Meduza, Russia’s leading independent news site.

Russian media linked allegations of Krasir Shik, who left Russia in early March, to an Instagram post in which he expressed shock and outrage at the mass executions of civilians in the suburbs of Kyiv occupied by Russian troops in early spring.