The Russian regime does not allow dissenting opinions on the war against Ukraine. A Moscow district deputy feels this drastically. The judgment is a signal to all those who express their opinions out loud.
Alexei Gorinov – here in June without handcuffs – shows a sheet of paper with the inscription “I am against the war” from the glass cage in the courtroom.
Alexei Gorinov stood in the glass cage intended for the accused in Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court on Friday like a criminal in handcuffs. The verdict of the judge – seven years in a penal colony – was harder than for some serious assault. But Gorinov’s offense consisted of verbal outrages: the soon to be 61-year-old Moscow district deputy called things by their proper name.
Freedom of expression not desired
At a meeting in mid-March, he did not speak of a “special military operation” but of “war” in Ukraine. When discussing the district’s children’s entertainment program, he also opposed the holding of dance events and children’s drawing competitions, while in the neighboring country children were dying every day due to the invasion of the Russian army. Above all else, everything must be done to end this war immediately. Since the beginning of March it has been an administrative offence, in more serious cases a criminal offence, to call Russia’s campaign in Ukraine a war and to cite information other than that disseminated by the Defense Ministry.
The recording of the meeting was later posted on the internet as usual. What was an ordinary debate with differing political viewpoints was enough to find Gorinov guilty of “public dissemination of demonstrably false information about the Russian armed forces”: two State Duma deputies presented themselves as informers, while the judge gave the defense witnesses in the verdict dismissed as “subjective”. The fact that the local politician is said to have acted “by taking advantage of his official position, with prior agreement and out of political hatred” was also aggravating.
To substantiate this, «experts» commissioned by the prosecution subjected Gorinov’s statements to linguistic and psychological analyses. Nine investigators examined a few sentences as if under a microscope in order to decode his “secret thoughts,” Gorinov mocked in his closing statement in court.
setting an example
The trial of Gorinov has precedent character. The verdict is the crystal-clear political verdict of a dictatorship. So far, since the beginning of March, 68 criminal proceedings for “defamation of the army” have been pending. Gorinov is now the first to be sentenced to imprisonment. The fact that the judge accepted the sentence demanded by the prosecution should be a signal to society and especially to politically active citizens. Ilya Yashin, one of the last remaining democratic opposition politicians in Russia, was also involved as a witness in the proceedings. He is currently serving a prison sentence for flimsy reasons – he could also face charges of “defamation of the army”.
The publicist Mikhail Fischman called the verdict “Stalinist”. In Gorinov’s case, his role as a people’s deputy played a role: his dissent undermined the unity of the people in support of the “special operation” evoked by President Putin. That shouldn’t be. The political scientist Tatjana Stanowaja also sees an example being set by the politician Gorinov, who the regime sees as acting insubordinately. Any politician who wants to deviate will now have this verdict in mind.
Against dehumanization
According to the charge Gorinov had not acted alone. The chairman of the district council, Yelena Kotyonochkina, who supported Gorinov in the discussion and chose even more drastic words, is considered an “accomplice”. Originally, a complaint had only been filed against her. She had then fled the country, was charged and put out to search. Gorinow stayed, was arrested at the end of April and has been in custody ever since, which in itself is torture in Russia.
In his final word in court he remembered his childhood among war veterans scarred by World War II, his grandfather who fell under the wheels of Stalinist terror and how he himself defended the White House in Moscow in August 1991, during the August coup, and how he never imagined himself, thirty Standing in court years later for his words and opinion. War is the fastest means of dehumanization, said Gorinov. He couldn’t accept that. The Russian dictatorship wants to break people like Gorinov. So far she hasn’t succeeded.