Imprisoned Kremlin critic stands a second trial for opposing Ukraine war

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Gorinov appeared in court on Wednesday for a second trial for opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine, an independent news site reported.

The new trial against Gorinov, a 63-year-old former member of a Moscow municipal council who is suffering from a chronic lung condition, is the latest in the unrelenting crackdown against dissent that the Kremlin unleashed after sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Gorinov is already serving a prison term for public criticism of the full-scale invasion — he was the first known Russian sent to prison under a law that essentially bans any public expression about the war that deviates from the official narrative.

In July 2022, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian army at a municipal council meeting by voicing skepticism about a children’s art competition in his constituency while saying that “every day children are dying” in Ukraine.

The authorities launched a second case against him last year, according to his supporters. He was accused of “justifying terrorism” in conversations to his cellmates about Ukraine’s Azov battalion, which Russia outlawed as a terrorist organization, and the 2022 explosion on the Crimean bridge, which Moscow deemed an act of terrorism.

Gorinov vehemently rejected the accusations Wednesday, independent news site Mediazona reported. It quoted him as telling the court that he merely said the annexed Crimean Peninsula was Ukrainian territory and called Azov a part of the Ukrainian army.

“I am far from the ideology of terrorism,” Gorinov was quoted as saying. He said “nothing else has been proven during the investigation, there is just some kind of rubbish written (in the indictment).”

Gorinov’s trial was held in the Vladimir region, where he is serving time. Photos from the courtroom, published by Mediazona, showed a weary Gorinov in the defendant’s cage, holding a hand-written placard saying: “Stop killing. Let’s stop the war.”

He had part of a lung removed before prison and struggled with respiratory illnesses behind bars.

The arrest, conviction and imprisonment of Gorinov — a low-profile activist — has shocked many. In written comments to The Associated Press from behind bars in March 2023, Gorinov said “authorities needed an example they could showcase to others (of) an ordinary person, rather than a public figure.”

According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that tracks political arrests, some 1,100 people have been implicated in criminal cases over their anti-war stance since February 2022. A total of 340 of them are currently behind bars or have been involuntarily committed to medical institutions.