A TV screen grab of Oleg Orlov after his sentencing in Moscow
Barely weeks after the sudden death of dissident activist Alexei Navalny in his arctic prison earlier this month, a Russian court on Tuesday sentenced Oleg Orlov, a 70-year-old human rights campaigner, to two-and-a-half years in jail for criticising the war in Ukraine.
Orlov, one of the leaders of Memorial, a human rights outfit which was one of three winners that shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was charged with “discrediting” the Russian army in an article in a French newspaper, in which he claimed Russian soldiers were committing mass murder in Ukraine. The article also argued that his country had “slipped back into totalitarianism.” The Russian Supreme Court, ostensibly at President Vladimir Putin’s behest, had banned Memorial in 2021, but that didn’t stop the feisty Orlov from continuing his protests against Putin and the war in Ukraine.
After the ruling, a defiant Orlov insisted he had not committed any crime, and regretted none of his actions.
“Isn’t it scary to watch what our country, which you probably also love, is turning into?,” he asked the judge and the prosecutor in his closing speech. “Isn’t it scary that in this absurdity, in this dystopia, maybe not only you and your children will have to live, but also, God forbid, your grandchildren?”
He also praised Navalny, saying: “He was an amazing person, brave and honest, who, in conditions that were made incredibly harsh specifically for him, did not lose optimism and faith in the future of our country. Whatever the specific circumstances of his death might have been, this was a murder.”
Orlov, who had protested against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1970s, was arrested several times since Putin launched his “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.
“I made a decision a long time ago that I want to live and die in Russia, it’s my country. Even though it’s never been so bad,” Orlov had told The Observer, the Sunday newspaper published by the Guardian group, in March 2022.
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