Dozhd published the last word of the municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky District of Moscow Alexei Gorinov, with whom he speaks at a court hearing on the appeal of his case. The trial is being held behind closed doors, as the judge reported on the threats she received. The bailiffs also refused to let Gorinov's wife and son into the building, since "all cases of discrediting the army are held in a closed court session."
Updated: Gorinov's sentence was reduced by one month – up to 6 years 11 months.
Here is Gorinov's appeal to the court:
“Seven years in prison – is it a lot or a little?
Solar radiation reaches the Earth in eight minutes. The wavefront from a skyward beam of a searchlight will reach the nearest star to the Sun in more than four years – it will take almost two-thirds of my time. The closest star system to us, the Andromeda galaxy, will take light about two million years to reach.
Unimaginably many? But remember how many people were affected by the war in Ukraine, taking away years of peaceful, normal life from each of them – and someone even had a life! – and multiply.
Feel, understand the cosmic scale of the events we are talking about here. The same scale of responsibility rests on everyone – including me.
And the least I can do is to call a spade a spade.
Will seven years be enough for me – taking into account the past – to be re-educated from a pacifist to a "hawk"? To recognize the ongoing special military operation not as a military conflict, war, but as a peacekeeping action that brings peace to people? To learn to deny the death of the civilian population, including children, during this "operation"? To call not for the cessation of hostilities, but for their continuation? Let's see…
Let's also see if these seven years will be enough for the political leadership of Russia to realize what a foreign policy, economic and moral catastrophe it has led our country to.
Devastation unseen since World War II in a European country. Many tens of thousands of dead and wounded on both sides. Millions of refugees. At the same time, we are told daily and hourly that this war is for the sake of peace. They teach that killing each other is right and normal.
In one block of television news, we are enthusiastically shown the deadly firing of shells and rockets, each shot of which costs a million rubles! Then – the delivery of humanitarian aid to the survivors in the territories "liberated" from them. And after that, they offer to chip in for another expensive operation for a sick child.
Not! This not normal.
This may seem normal only in the inverted picture of the world that has developed in the head of one – or in the heads of several – people who have absolute power, all its levers and who have separated themselves from civil society, from the people.
I want to plead guilty.
Blame before the long-suffering people of Ukraine. Before the entire world community. The guilt is that I, as a citizen of my country, could not do anything, could not prevent the ongoing madness in any way. I also apologize for the fact that, apparently, there is nothing I can do to stop it.
I also say this on behalf of my compatriots who are overcome by fear of repression, from whom I receive many letters of support.
Now the leading economically developed countries, their governments are responsible for peace on Earth, for life and technological progress without wars. Russia has already made innumerable victims in the 20th century in the Civil War, in the frenzy of collectivization and the Great Terror, in two world and many local wars, but so far it has not passed the test of its share of responsibility.
Realizing the unlawfulness of their actions, the authorities are shifting part of the burden of responsibility for these acts onto the courts, convulsively shoving citizens into prisons and camps for their word, for expressing their opinion, for their convictions. The very possibility in the 21st century of initiating criminal cases like mine, the possibility of today's judicial investigation, is a shame for our country. All this has already been in her history.
Based on the lessons of our common past, in view of the inevitably coming future of Russia, I am already justified.
On July 8, Gorinov was sentenced to 7 years in a penal colony under an article about spreading fake news about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces. The reason was that at a meeting of the council of deputies, he called for stopping the war in Ukraine and withdrawing Russian troops from there. Gorinov was the first to receive a real term under this article.