This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
Moscow resident Yury Kokhovets has been sentenced to five years in prison for condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during an interview on the street in July 2022 with a reporter from RFE/RL.
The Moscow City Court handed down the decision on September 17, cancelling a lower court’s decision in April to sentence Kokhovets to five years of “forced labor.”
Kokhovets was immediately taken into custody after the decision was pronounced.
The punishment defined as forced labor in Russia means that convicts do not serve their terms in prison, but instead can choose to stay home and be sent to work at a nearby industrial facility as designated by the Federal Penitentiary Service.
A certain portion of their salaries are deducted by the state.
The Moscow City Court, however, said it changed the sentence after finding Kokhovets guilty of “distributing false information about the Russian military on the basis of political hatred.”
In July 2022, Kokhovets was approached by an RFE/RL journalist who asked him if he thought a detente between Russia and NATO countries was needed.
“Of course we need (de-escalation), but it all depends on our government. It is our government that started it all…. It is Russia who created all these problems,” Kokhovets told RFE/RL.
“I don’t see any problems with NATO, it is not planning to attack anyone.”
He added that Russian forces had killed civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha “for no reason at all.” Moscow denies accusations it has committed war crimes in Ukraine.
Kokhovets pleaded partially guilty, denying that his statements during the interview with RFE/RL were hatred-based. He also stated at the trial that he was exercising his constitutional right to freely express his opinion while talking with the RFE/RL journalist.
At the September 17 hearing, Kokhovets also said he did not know that talking to RFE/RL was a violation of the Criminal Code and that he had no idea that the interview he gave to RFE/RL would be published on the Internet.
His lawyer said at the original trial that her client had no hatred toward anyone when he talked to RFE/RL.
According to Yelena Sheremetyeva, the “proof” of her client’s guilt was based purely on a forensic linguistic examination of his speech, which according to her, had been held with gross violations, namely that the two people who studied his statements were not state-licensed linguists.
The linguistic forensics study was carried out by math teacher Natalya Kryukova and interpreter Aleksandr Tarasov, who also conducted similar linguistic examinations in the cases of the closure of the Memorial Human Rights Center in 2021 and the imprisonment of Memorial’s co-chairman, Oleg Orlov, in February this year.
