By Kontur and AFP | 2023-11-17

MOSCOW -- A Russian court on Thursday (November 16) sentenced artist Alexandra Skochilenko to seven years in prison for spreading "false information" about the army after she swapped supermarket price tags with slogans criticizing Russia's offensive in Ukraine.

The 33-year-old, known as Sasha, is the latest among thousands of Russians to be detained, jailed or fined for speaking out against Moscow's military intervention.

Supporters shouted "shame" and "we're with you Sasha" after the judge, Oksana Demiasheva, read out the verdict, an AFP journalist in court reported.

"Every person in this room wants only one thing: Peace. Why fight?" Skochilenko said in a closing statement.

"Her persecution has become synonymous with the absurdly cruel oppression faced by Russians openly opposing their country’s criminal war," rights group Amnesty International said after the verdict.

On March 31 last year -- as Russia pursued a brutal siege of Ukraine's port city of Mariupol -- Skochilenko replaced five price tags in a branch of one of Russia's largest supermarket chains in Saint Petersburg.

One of the messages included claims about a Russian strike on a theatre in Mariupol that was reported to have left hundreds dead.

"The cost of this war is the life of our children" and "Putin has been lying to us from television screens for 20 years" were written on other tags.

An elderly shopper reported the swapped tags to police.

Human rights group Memorial -- now banned in Russia -- said police spent 10 days interrogating supermarket staff and inspecting security camera footage before arresting Skochilenko.

"They sometimes give less for murder than for five price tags in a supermarket," said Boris Vishnevsky, a politician linked to the opposition Yabloko party, describing the ruling a "reprisal."

"Hopefully someday the pendulum will turn the other way," he said.

'Intimidation and repression'

For now, however, the Kremlin is continuing to clamp down on ordinary Russians speaking out against the war in Ukraine and imposing harsh punishment on those already imprisoned for their political views.

Even calling the conflict a "war" is an offense punishable by fines or jail time.

At least 38 new "anti-war" criminal cases were initiated in the month of October alone, according to OVD-Info, a human rights organization monitoring detentions and providing legal assistance to political protestors.

Among them are Artyom Sakharov, 18, who was reciting anti-war and opposition poems near a monument dedicated to poet Alexander Pushkin in the city of Barnaul in southern Siberia.

Sakharov said he submitted an application to hold a cultural event in early October.

"But because at the end of the event I said the words 'peace to the world,' they credited me with organizing a rally and not an arts evening," he told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), responding to questions via VKontakte.

Sakharov said he was detained overnight and fined 75,000 RUB ($846).

In March he was fined 20,000 RUB ($226) for organizing an impromptu memorial to those killed in Ukraine.

"Antiwar and opposition activists are facing unprecedented pressure," said Sakharov, a political science student. "Fines, arrests and threats of prison. It's definitely a form of intimidation and repression."

Also in October, police detained Artyom Belsky, 34, who stood near the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg for about 30 minutes, holding a sign reading, "Wishing for peace is not a crime! I am against war."

"In Russia, people are imprisoned for simply wanting peace," Belsky, a specialist in decorative restoration, told the WSJ. "I don't think it's a crime to want peace."

Police had briefly detained Belsky in August after he hoisted a poster in the same location reading, "Russia is tired of corruption, repression and propaganda! Stop being silent about it!"

At that time he was fined 4,000 RUB ($45) for violating COVID-19 restrictions, as Russia still bans protests on the pretext that mass gatherings are a health hazard.

Defacing Russia's 'heroes'

Ordinary Russians constitute the majority of more than 20,000 people who have been arbitrarily detained since the start of the war, according to local and international human rights advocates as well as the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Russia.

In Novosibirsk, Siberia, a court found Irina Bocharova guilty of discrediting Russia's army for tearing down a poster exalting Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

She was fined 15,000 RUB ($170), according to OVD-Info. It said Bocharova tore down the poster because "she didn't want her child to see this propaganda."

The authorities also opened a criminal case against the creator of the animated series "Masyanya", Oleg Kuvaev, who lives in Israel and has spoken out against the war since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The creator of animated web series "Mr. Freeman", Pavel Muntyan, was also accused of spreading "fake stories" about the killings of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, in April 2022.

In Moscow, law enforcement authorities detained a 24-year-old transportation security employee for speaking on the telephone in the Ukrainian language. He was charged with "petty hooliganism," according to the Baza Telegram channel.

On Tuesday, Russia sentenced a man to six years in prison for vandalizing posters of Russian soldiers decorated as "heroes" for fighting in Ukraine.

Russia's Investigative Committee said the man's sentence had come into force after he was found guilty of "discrediting" the Russian army under a law used to stifle criticism and vandalism.

It did not name him, saying he is a 46-year-old "local" to the central city of Tolyatti, where the posters were damaged.

Memorial identified him as Alexei Arbuzenko, a "teacher, psychologist, speech therapist, writer and musician."

"The investigation and the court established that in 2022, the attacker repeatedly damaged posters depicting Russian servicemen who showed heroism in the special military operation," the committee said, using Moscow's name for its offensive.

Putin is 'afraid'

Still, the Kremlin denies that it is repressing dissent.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said authorities are clamping down on foreign attempts to undermine Russia's stability.

He defended the law against discrediting the Russian military, which was passed in March 2022, saying, "It was necessary to pass a law of appropriate severity."

But human rights advocates and activists say the crackdown, even for minor offenses -- like reading poetry or producing anti-war art -- reflects the paranoia and vulnerability of the Putin regime.

"He's afraid," Oleg Orlov, one of the leaders Memorial, told the WSJ. "Otherwise, why eliminate freedom of speech, why eliminate freedom to assemble?"

The repression in Russia appears to be spiraling, said Nikolai Petrov, a consulting fellow on the Russia and Eurasia program at the British think tank Chatham House.

"It was initially designed by the Kremlin, but it's developing by its own rules," Petrov told the WSJ, and "there’s no need for the Kremlin to stop it."