- Russian poets jailed for anti-war poetry
- Kremlin suppresses dissent, imposes severe sentences
- Thousands arrested for protesting war
As the Kremlin continues to suppress dissent, a Moscow court has sentenced two Russian men to several years in prison for reciting poetry against the conflict in Ukraine during an anti-mobilisation protest last year.
On Thursday, Artyom Kamardin, 33, received a seven-year prison sentence subsequent to his conviction for “undermining national security” and “inciting hatred” through his phone calls. The accusations were associated with his delivery of anti-war poetry at the September 2022 rally in Moscow.
Yegor Shtovba, aged 23, was likewise imposed a five-and-a-half-year term by the Tverskoy District Court on the aforementioned accusations, subsequent to his involvement in the incident and recitation of Kamardin’s verses.
Days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilisation of 300,000 reservists in response to Russia’s military setbacks in Ukraine, the protest was conducted the previous year. As a result of the action’s widespread disapproval, hundreds of thousands of individuals fled the country to avoid military conscription.
The concluding line of Kamardin’s poem “Kill me, militia man!” was “Glory to Kievan Rus, Novorossiya – suck!” The historic designation for the capital city of Ukraine, Kyiv, and the term employed by Moscow to denote the region of southeastern Ukraine it seeks to annex, respectively, are historical terms.
Poets Detained, Assaulted, and Jailed in Russia
Police stormed into the flat that Kamardin, his then-girlfriend Alexandra Popova, and another activist shared days later. Amnesty International reports that Popova claimed Kamardin was assaulted. This happened with a dumbbell by police prior to being forced to view a video of the incident. She further asserted that she was subjected to police threats of rape and superglue decals to her face. A subsequent Telegram clip depicted the battered and bruised Kamardin apologising for his remarks.
Thousands of individuals have been detained by Russian authorities. This is under wartime censorship laws for engaging in nonviolent protests against the offensive in Ukraine.
A smiling Kamardin recited a poem just before his sentencing. The poem describes poetry as “gut-wrenching” and “people accustomed to order” as frequently disliking it.
Following the conviction, Popova, who is now his wife, was escorted from the courtroom by bailiffs after she yelled “Shame!”
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“That is an extremely severe sentence,” she told the AFP news agency before her apprehension by police officers. “Seven years for poems, for a nonviolent offence.”
A prominent rights organisation that monitors political arrests and provides legal aid, OVD-Info, reports that 19,834 Russians were arrested for speaking out or demonstrating against the war between February 24, 2022, when Russia launched its invasion, and late October 2023.
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