Aleksandra Skotshilenko (32) has been in custody for almost a year. Her crime is that she replaced the price tags in shops with critical information about the war. She risks between five and ten years in prison.
Every day she is led into court in St. Petersburg, Skochilenko smiles bravely and likes to show the heart sign with her hands.
– The case against Skotshilenko says a lot about the situation in Russia now. All critical speech is gone, says the leader of the Helsinki Committee, Berit Lindeman, to VG.
– She used her ingenuity and found her way of illuminating the war. We constantly see that people are finding new methods, continues Lindeman.
The website OVD info reports that in just one week there are 85 criminal cases of a political nature in Russia.
– There are now soaring figures for political prisoners in Russian prisons. It is far above the figures of the last couple of decades of the Soviet era, says Berit Lindemann of the Helsinki Committee.
– It is terrible. It is much worse than in the Soviet era.
Aleksandra Skotshilenko has been in custody since April 13, 2022. Her case has been in court for more than three months, but only for a few hours now and then. Her defense attorney accuses the prosecutor of dragging out the case with unsavory methods, reports Mediazona.
She is accused of spreading false information about the armed forces. It was one of the laws that Putin and the Kremlin had introduced early in the war – to prevent criticism, section 20.3.3 of the Criminal Code. Many have already been convicted.
Skotshilenko is an artist, musician and writer – and an open lesbian. She has celiac disease, and consuming gluten can lead to organ failure or the development of auto-immune diseases. That’s why friends have to make sure she gets special food.
– Unworthy, says the defender Jurij Novoslodskij about how judge Oksana Demyasheva drags out the case. Virtually everyone who is indicted is sentenced in Russian trials.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Irina Nikandrova read out correspondence from the doping devices that the police have seized from Skotshilenko. There it emerged that she had used the word “idiot” about Putin, talked about “the Russians being deceived” when there are elections and praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi for being “lively and humane”, reports Mediazona.
It will therefore be used as arguments in the trial against her.
– Everything that has been read out from her notes is proof of her innocence, says defense lawyer Jurij Novoslodskij.
When the case started in February, he called the entire indictment against Skolichenko “fabricated”.
– The prosecution has no real evidence of guilt. The papers that they have submitted contain pure rubbish.
The head of the Helsinki Committee says that many Russians are resourceful in their fight against the regime.
– But even such underground protests can be severely cracked down on in today’s Russia.
Last weekend, some supporters of Skochilenko tried to hold an event in Moscow where her cartoons were shown. But after half an hour, masked police appeared, stopped the event and arrested several people, reports Avtozak Telegram.
PS: A court in the Vladimir region on Wednesday rejected a complaint from opposition leader Aleksey Navalny about poor conditions for having meetings with his lawyer in the penal camp where he is serving time, OVD-info reports.
