Moscow city councillor jailed for 7 years for anti-war comment

Alexei Gorinov advised a council assembly on March 15 that Russia was waging a warfare of aggression towards Ukraine.

Moscow city councillor Alexei Gorinov, accused of "disseminating clearly false information about Russia's army", holds a placard reading "Do you still need this war?" as he stands inside a defendants' cage during a court hearing in Moscow, Russia
Alexei Gorinov's supporters posted an image on Telegram of the councillor, handcuffed in a glass defendant's cage, holding up a placard studying: 'Do you continue to want this warfare?' in the course of the proceedings [Stringer/Reuters]

A Moscow district councillor has been jailed for seven years for criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in what a Kremlin-critical lawyer stated was the primary case of anybody going to jail below a brand new regulation on “faux data”.

Alexei Gorinov, a member of the Krasnoselsky district council, advised a council assembly on March 15, the place a youngsters’s drawing contest was mentioned, that Russia was waging a warfare of aggression towards Ukraine.

“What sort of youngsters’s drawing contest can we discuss for Youngsters’s Day … when we now have youngsters dying daily?” he says in a recording of the assembly posted on YouTube.

He was arrested below Article 207.3 of the legal code, handed shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 to outlaw “deliberate dissemination of pretend details about Russia’s military”, outlined as data deviating from official stories.

Gorinov’s supporters posted an image on their Telegram channel of the councillor, handcuffed in a glass defendant’s cage, holding up a placard studying: “Do you continue to want this warfare?” in the course of the proceedings.

“They took away my spring, they took away my summer time, and now they’ve taken away seven extra years of my life,” they quoted him as saying at Friday’s sentencing.

Leonid Volkov, chief of employees for jailed opposition chief Alexey Navalny, stated the sentence – confirmed on the courtroom’s personal Telegram account – was meant to make an instance of individuals utilizing the phrase “warfare” to check with Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Since starting what it calls a “particular army operation”, Russia has cracked down on media and people referring to its actions as a “warfare” or “invasion”.

Many individuals have been handed administrative fines for protesting towards the warfare, however lawyer Pavel Chikov stated on Telegram that solely two others had been convicted of legal offences below Article 207.3, and that one had been fined and the opposite given a suspended jail sentence.

Russia has stated it had to make use of pressure to defend persecuted Russian-speakers and defuse a army menace from Ukraine.

Kyiv and its Western allies dismiss such justifications as baseless pretexts for a warfare of conquest that has price hundreds of lives, razed cities and cities and displaced a 3rd of Ukraine’s inhabitants.

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