A jailed Kremlin critic faces a second trial for opposing the war in Ukraine

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

The new case against Gorinov, a 63-year-old former member of the Moscow city council who suffers from chronic lung disease, is the latest in an ongoing crackdown on dissidents unleashed by the Kremlin after sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Gorinov has already served time for publicly criticizing the full-scale attack – he was the first known Russian to be jailed under a law that prohibits any public expression of 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 expressing doubts about a children’s art competition in his district while saying that “children are dying every day” in Ukraine. .

Authorities filed a second case against him last year, according to his supporters. He was accused of “justifying terrorism” in talks with his colleagues about the Ukrainian Azov militia, which Russia dismissed as a terrorist organization, and the 2022 Crimean bridge bombing, which Moscow saw as an act of terrorism.

Gorinov dismissed the miracles on Wednesday, reports the independent news portal Mediazona. He quoted him as telling the court that he simply said that the Crimean Peninsula is under Ukraine and called Azov part of the Ukrainian military.

“I am not far from the idea of ​​terrorism,” Gorinov was quoted as saying. He said “nothing else has been proven during the investigation, there is only rubbish written down (in the cases).”

Gorinov’s trial was held in the Vladimir region, where he is serving time. Photos from the court, published by Mediazona, showed an exhausted Gorinov in the defendant’s cage, holding a handwritten sign that read: “Stop killing.” Let’s stop the war.”

He had a partial lung removed before prison and suffered from respiratory infections in prison.

The arrest, conviction and imprisonment of Gorinov – a low-level activist – shocked many. In a statement to the Associated Press from his prison sentence in March 2023, Gorinov said that “the authorities need an example to show others (of an ordinary person), not an ordinary person.”

According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that tracks political arrests, about 1,100 people are involved in criminal cases because of their anti-war status as of February 2022. A total of 340 are currently or have voluntarily surrendered to medical facilities.