A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced a veteran human rights advocate, who spoke out against the war in Ukraine, to two years and six months in prison.
Oleg Orlov, 70, was convicted of “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian army in an article he wrote denouncing the invasion of Ukraine. He has rejected the case against him as politically motivated, telling the court in his closing statement: “I don’t regret anything and I don’t repent anything.” Orlov was hand cuffed and taken directly into custody from the courtroom. His verdict concluded a retrial in which Orlov was earlier ordered to pay a fine. Underscoring how little tolerance President Vladimir Putin’s government has for criticism of its invasion of Ukraine, the prosecution had appealed, seeking a harsher punishment.
The prosecution claimed that Orlov was motivated to write the anti-war article by hostility toward “traditional Russian spiritual, moral and patriotic values” and hatred of the military, according to the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona.
In a statement, Memorial called Orlov’s sentence “an attempt to drown out the voice of the human rights movement in Russia and any criticism of the state.” It vowed to continue its work.
The verdict drew a crowd of dozens of supporters, including 18 Western diplomats, Mediazona reported.
“I am alarmed and concerned by today’s outcome. Oleg Orlov has personally fought for the rights of Russians for more than 45 years,” U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy said in a statement. “In previous times, his efforts have been awarded at the highest levels. In today’s Russia he is being locked away for them.”
In October 2023, a Moscow court had convicted Orlov and fined him 150,000 rubles (about $1,500 at the time), a significantly milder punishment when compared to the long prison terms others have received for criticizing the war.
Both the defense and the prosecution appealed, and a higher court voided the fine, sending the case back to the prosecutors. The new trial began earlier this month, another step in an unrelenting crackdown on dissent that the Kremlin ratcheted up after sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Also on Tuesday, a court in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s largely Muslim republic of Chechnya, sentenced a man to 3 1/2 years in prison for publicly burning a Quran in front of a mosque. The Russian state news agency Tass reported that Nikita Zhuravel admitted he did so on the instructions of Ukrainian special services in return for a payment.
In September 2023, Chechnya’s authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video of his son appearing to beat Zhuravel in detention. Kadyrov praised his son for “defending his religion.”
