Nov 16, 2023 at 10:08 PM Update: 2 hours ago
The 33-year-old Russian artist Alexandra Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday. She had replaced price tags in supermarkets with notes with messages against the war with Ukraine.
Skochilenko was convicted of spreading “false information about the Russian army”. She spent about a year and a half in pretrial detention.
At the beginning of April 2022, notes appeared in a Russian supermarket that normally display product price tags. “The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol where four hundred people were in hiding at the time,” said one of the cards. Skochilenko had made them as an act of defiance.
After a supermarket visitor reported the action, Skochilenko was identified via camera footage and arrested a few days later. She is one of the first Russians to be criminally prosecuted under new legislation by President Vladimir Putin. That legislation criminalizes “discrediting the armed forces” and “spreading false information about the Russian military.”
Photo: NU.nl/Bart-Jan Dekker
‘I stick to my opinion and my truth’
Her lawyers argued for acquittal. They mentioned that she is at risk of dying in prison due to chronic illnesses. Skochilenko has been diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune disease. She also has a heart defect, which means her heart sometimes stops beating for two to three seconds.
During her closing statement, the artist struck a challenging tone. “My case is so crazy and funny that the staff at the prison where I am staying exclaim with disbelieving eyes, ‘Do they really put people in jail for that?’ Even people who support this special military operation do not want me to do this,” she told the court.
“How little faith does our prosecutor have in our state and society if he thinks that our state and public safety can be ruined by five little pieces of paper?” she wondered aloud. “I stand by my opinion and my truth.”
Skochilenko is not the only one convicted under Putin’s new legislation. Journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who protested live on state television against the invasion of Ukraine, was sentenced in absentia last month to 8.5 years in prison. And in April, British-Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his criticism of the war.
Image: EPA
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2023-11-16 22:32:31
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