Harsh prison sentences for antiwar protesters and dissidents on the rise in Russian courts

A new study of Russia’s court statistics points to a trend for increasingly harsh sentences issued when trying Russia’s antiwar protesters and dissidents, chiefly under the two laws limiting the freedom of speech with regard to Russia’s military operations.

The analytical project Re:Russia has calculated that, over a nine-month period in 2022, 59 protest-related verdicts had been issued, 20 of them entailing real prison sentences. In contrast, from December 2022 to last March, the 65 verdicts issued resulted in 27 prison sentences, under the same articles of the criminal law.

Longer prison sentences are becoming more common as well, the study shows. The examples include cases like Dmitry Ivanov’s: the author of a student protest channel on Telegram got 8.5 years in prison. Similarly, the artist Lyudmila Razumova and her husband Alexander Martynov, a couple who painted antiwar graffiti in their community, received a seven- and a 6.5-year sentence respectively. Kirill Butylin, tried for attempted arson at a suburban draft office outside of Moscow, was sentenced to 13 years for what the court qualified as a “terrorist act.”

Based on the available data, Re:Russia notes an overall trend for greater numbers of guilty verdicts and increasing severity in punishing the antiwar dissidents.