Jailed Kremlin critic convicted again and handed new prison term for opposing the war in Ukraine

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - Imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Gorinov was convicted again on Friday for opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine and handed a three-year prison term.

A swift, three-day trial against Gorinov, once a low-profile activist, underscored Moscow’s intolerance of any dissenting voices.

Gorinov, a 63-year-old former member of a Moscow municipal council, is already serving a seven-year prison term for public criticism of the full-scale invasion.

Taking into account his previous conviction and sentence, a court in Russia’s Vladimir region ordered him to serve a total of five years in a maximum-security prison, a facility with stricter conditions than the one he’s currently in. Russia’s independent news site Mediazona quoted Gorinov’s lawyer as saying that it means he will spend a year more behind bars compared to his previous sentence.

Gorinov was first convicted in July 2022, when a court in Moscow sentenced him to seven years in prison for "spreading false information" about the Russian army at a municipal council meeting. Gorinov allegedly voiced skepticism about a children's art competition in his constituency while saying that "every day children are dying" in Ukraine.

He was the first known Russian sent to prison under a 2022 law that essentially bans any public expression about the war that deviates from the official narrative.

His arrest, conviction and imprisonment has shocked many. In written comments to The Associated Press from behind bars in March 2023, Gorinov said "authorities needed an example they could showcase to others (of) an ordinary person, rather than a public figure."

Authorities launched a second case against him last year, according to his supporters. He was accused of "justifying terrorism" in conversations with his cellmates about Ukraine's Azov battalion, which Russia outlawed as a terrorist organization, and the 2022 explosion on the Crimean bridge, which Moscow deemed an act of terrorism.

Gorinov vehemently rejected the accusations Wednesday, independent news site Mediazona reported. It quoted him as telling the court that he merely said the annexed Crimean Peninsula was Ukrainian territory and called Azov a part of the Ukrainian army.

Gorinov's trial began Wednesday in the Vladimir region, where he is serving time stemming from his previous conviction. Photos from the courtroom, published by Mediazona, showed a weary Gorinov in the defendant's cage, with a hand-drawn peace symbol on a piece of paper covering his prison badge. He held a hand-written placard saying: "Stop killing. Let's stop the war."

He had part of a lung removed before prison and struggled with respiratory illnesses behind bars.

In his closing statement in court on Friday, Gorinov remained defiant and once again condemned the Russian authorities for the war in Ukraine.

"My guilt is that I, as a citizen of my country, allowed this war to happen and could not stop it,” Mediazona quoted him as saying.

"But I would like my guilt and responsibility to be shared with me by the organizers, participants, supporters of the war, as well as the persecutors of those who advocate peace. I continue to live with the hope that this will happen someday. In the meantime, I ask those who live in Ukraine and my fellow citizens who suffered from the war to forgive me," Gorinov said.

According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that tracks political arrests, some 1,100 people have been implicated in criminal cases over their anti-war stance since February 2022. A total of 340 of them are currently behind bars or have been involuntarily committed to medical institutions.