By Mark Trevelyan
LONDON (Reuters) – Russian dissident Alexei Gorinov was found guilty of “justifying terrorism” in his latest trial on Friday and sentenced to three more years in a penal colony.
Gorinov denied the charge and delivered a defiant closing speech to the court in which he condemned what he called Russia’s “bloody slaughter” in the Ukraine war.
The 63-year-old, who is in poor health, is one of the most prominent jailed dissidents still inside Russia following a major East-West prisoner swap in August that saw the release of others including Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin.
Gorinov was already serving a seven-year sentence after being convicted in 2022 of spreading false information about Russia’s armed forces under a censorship law introduced shortly after Russia launched its war in Ukraine.
He had told a council meeting in March of that year that Russia was waging a war of aggression against Ukraine and that children there were “dying every day” as a result.
In his new trial, which started on Wednesday, he was accused of promoting terrorism in conversations with fellow inmates in prison.
In his final speech to the court, published by a supporters’ group on Telegram, Gorinov condemned what he described as the “degradation” of Russia’s political system and said he had been a lifelong opponent of war and violence.
“The third year of the war is ending, the third year of victims and destruction on European territory unseen since World War Two, the deprivation and suffering of millions of people. We cannot remain silent about this,” he said.
He said the price of the war was being paid not by those who started it but by those ordinary people who raised their voices against it. He also asked, as a Russian, for forgiveness from the people of Ukraine.
“Let’s stop this bloody slaughter that no one needs – neither us nor the people of Ukraine,” he said.
Public protest against the war is rare in Russia, which has cracked down on any opposition to the Kremlin’s policies with lengthy prison sentences. But dissidents such as the late Alexei Navalny have used their right to speak in court as an opportunity to express dissent.
Such statements often go unreported by Russian state media but are published on Telegram channels and by independent news outlets based outside the country.
The Kremlin does not comment on individual cases, but says Russia’s courts are upholding the law against people engaged in subversive activity at a time of war.
(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
