Up to seven years in prison for words. This Thursday, December 28, a Moscow court sentenced two men to heavy sentences for reciting verses against the Ukrainian offensive during a demonstration last year.
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The repression of dissident voices in Russia does not weaken at the end of the year. According to the Russian NGO OVD-Info, nearly 20,000 Russians have been arrested since the start of the conflict in Ukraine for protesting against Kremlin policies. The NGO Memorial lists 633 political prisoners behind bars.
Latest victims: two Russian poets who participated in a reading against the war in Ukraine, sentenced by a Moscow court to sentences of five and a half and seven years in prison. The two men were convicted of inciting hatred towards members of armed groups in Donbass and for “ public calls to commit activities against state security “. Their fault? Having participated in a public poetry reading in Moscow, near the statue of the poet Mayakovsky, a traditional gathering place for opponents of power and dissidents since Soviet times.
One of them claims to have been raped during his arrest
During this event, Artyom Kamardin, 33, who received the heaviest sentence, recited a poem hostile to the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Like Yegor Shtovba, 23, who received 5 and a half years, he was arrested in September 2022, the day after the public reading.
During the search of his home, the latter claimed to have been beaten and raped with a dumbbell by police officers. His wife was also allegedly mistreated by the police. Present in court for the judgment, Alexandra Popova, regretted to the AFP a sentence “ very severe “, “ for poetry, a non-violent offense “. “ If we had normal courts, this situation would not exist “, she declared to the press, before being taken away by the police.
Today, the opponent Ksenia Fadeeva, close to Alexeï Navalny, must also be determined about her fate. This young thirty-year-old, who was elected in September 2020 to the municipal council of Tomsk in Siberia and who was head of the local office of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund, was tried for extremism. The prosecutor requested this Thursday 10 and a half years in prison.