Russia: Sentencing for Prominent Kremlin Critic
www.hrw.org
Moscow City Court is scheduled to deliver a verdict on April 17, 2023 in the criminal trial against the prominent Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, Human Rights Watch said today. Russian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Kara-Murza, who has been arbitrarily detained for the past year, as well as other peaceful civic and political activists arbitrarily detained in Russia.

On April 17, 2023, the Moscow City Court convicted Vladimir Kara-Murza on combined charges of treason, dissemination of “false information” about the conduct of the Russian Armed Forces, and involvement with an “undesirable organization”, and sentenced him to 25 years in maximum security prison with an additional fine of 400,000 rubles (approximately USD 5,000), restriction of freedom for 1.5 years, and a ban on journalistic activities for 7 years.

  • PolandIsAStateOfMind
    35·
    2 years ago

    Russia did

    Ukraine coup government did. They attacked Donbass in 2014, starting civil war. Donbass called Russia for help to which they answered, but 8 years later.

    It was naturally escalation, but hardly starting the aggression in Ukraine. I won’t even mention USA having significant role in the coup in the first place and then NATO arming Ukraine during the entire civil war.

    • pancake
      23·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, I know. But the word “aggression” is (intentionally, hats off to US propaganda) vague; the user I was responding to interpreted it as “launching an attack into a territory generally recognized as foreign”, so I’m going with that definition. I generally do not argue on terminology, since it’s not practical to do so. But thanks for the heads up!

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind
        21·
        2 years ago

        “launching an attack into a territory generally recognized as foreign”

        That definition is pretty vague too, it just move the weight from “agression” to “attack” which is also not very defined, but if it is exluding internal conflict for some weird reason, in that case it would be USA taking big part in couping the democratically (or at least the most democratically in the history of independent Ukraine) elected president.

        • pancake
          1·
          2 years ago

          Well, you’re really damn right. But lately I’ve found it easier to just sidestep the whole “aggression” thing altogether than argue on that, where I would have most certainly hit a wall. So, “yeah, sure, scary Russkie man did the bad, now let’s move on to the important stuff”. I’ve come to like doing it like this more.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind
            31·
            2 years ago

            It definitely ease up discussion with those types, but by aquitting the origin of events, you just end up on their position. The guy you discuss know this extremely well, he will go to extreme lenghts to not admit there was even a US-sponsored coup in 2014 because if he admit it his entire narration will crumble into dust.