Russian dissident Oleg Orlov, on trial since Friday for having repeatedly denounced the assault on Ukraine, refused to speak during this first hearing, according to an AFP journalist on site.
“I refuse to testify.
I simply reserve the right to make closing remarks, because I consider this trial to be unfair
,” he said.
“I do not admit my guilt.
I don’t understand how a person can be persecuted for expressing an opinion
,” he insisted before the court which is judging this case in Moscow.
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Veteran of Memorial, the NGO co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize and dissolved by Russian justice, this 70-year-old man faces up to five years in prison for his repeated denunciations of the military offensive in Ukraine, launched there two years old by Vladimir Putin.
Rectangular glasses on his nose and dressed in a light blue shirt and a gray sweatshirt, Orlov told AFP a few minutes before the opening of the debates to be
“in a fighting spirit”
.
“I don’t expect anything good
,” he admitted, however, accompanied by his lawyer.
Oleg Orlov remains, for a few days at least, an exceptional figure by being both free in Russia and openly critical.
Second trial
At the end of a first trial, Oleg Orlov was found guilty in October 2023 of having
“discredited”
the army and sentenced to a small fine, a very lenient verdict in a Russia which has become accustomed to imprison critics of the regime.
To everyone's surprise, the prosecution requested this fine, justifying it by the age of the opponent and his state of health.
Then, he changed his mind and appealed, deploring an ultimately
“excessively light”
sanction which did not correspond to the
“public danger”
that the accused would represent.
Russian justice then decided to send the case against Mr. Orlov back to investigators and launch a new trial against the dissident for the same accusations.
If most of Vladimir Putin's critics have been incarcerated or driven into exile in recent years, against a backdrop of accelerating repression, Oleg Orlov explained to AFP this week that he was staying in Russia to
"continue the fight"
.
“I don’t want to end up in prison... But do I have a choice?”
, he asked.
There is therefore no question for him of bowing down in the face of justice which he describes as unjust:
“Repent, admit guilt before the judges?
“That would mean denying my whole life
. ”
However, he says he expects a guilty verdict before the presidential election in mid-March which should see Vladimir Putin triumph without opposition.
“No one doubts that I will be convicted
,” he summed up to AFP in his apartment in the north of Moscow.
Also read: Journey to the heart of Putin's nationalist Russia facing the “satanic West”
“Dark Forces”
In fact, Oleg Orlov is accused of having demonstrated against the Russian assault in Ukraine and of having signed a vitriolic column against the Russian authorities published by the French media Mediapart.
This text accuses Russian troops of the
"mass"
murder of Ukrainian civilians and denounces the
"victory"
in Russia of the
"darkest forces"
, those who
"dreamed of total revenge"
after the disintegration of the USSR in 1991 .
A sign that the noose has tightened around him in recent months, the Russian authorities placed him on the infamous list of
“foreign agents”
at the beginning of February , a qualification which is accompanied in particular by strict administrative constraints.
Hundreds of other people, human rights activists, opponents or independent journalists have been placed in recent years on this list with Soviet-era overtones.
Active since the 1970s, Oleg Orlov has become one of the pillars of Memorial, the main organization fighting in Russia to preserve the memory of Soviet repressions and documenting those of President Putin's Russia.
The NGO was dissolved at the end of 2021 by Russian justice, but was then rewarded with the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, a few months after the launch of the Russian assault in Ukraine.