NOTE: Despite my current beef with FB’s censors, I cannot — will not — overlook my pledge to remember the illegally-held hostages in Russia’s prisons who are still awaiting word of some progress toward their release. And though (mercifully) I have no word of any new hostages this week, there is news of a Russian prisoner’s added sentence, for whom I willingly break my silence.

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You may have tried this trick with your children when they were small: If they complained of being bored with all of their old toys and games, and you weren’t ready to buy new ones, you might secretly have dug through the box of forgotten toys, pulled out a couple of things they hadn’t seen in a year or so, and tried to renew their interest in them as though they were brand new. They may have caught on eventually, but at least you would have bought yourself some time.

That almost seems to be the sort of thing that’s happening in Russia these days. When they temporarily run short of outspoken dissidents to arrest, do they simply pull out an old file and invent a reason to extend an existing prisoner’s sentence?

Aleksei Gorinov might think so.

Gorinov, a former Moscow municipal deputy, was sentenced in July 2022 to seven years in prison for spreading “fake news” about the Russian military. What he had done was voice his opposition to the invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.

Then, in October of 2023 — while serving that original sentence — a new case was opened against him, charging him with “justifying terrorism.” The evidence: reports by fellow inmates of an alleged conversation regarding Ukraine’s Azov Regiment. [RFE/RL, November 29, 2024.]

And this week, following a three-day trial, Aleksei Gorinov, 63, was sentenced to an additional three years in prison for “justifying terrorism.”

Gorinov, adamantly denying the new charges, has said:

“I am far from any ideology of terrorism. I am a committed internationalist and an opponent of war and violence, as I have consistently stated publicly throughout my life.” [Id.]

Gorinov — one of the most prominent of the dissidents left behind after the August prisoner swap with the West — was the first person sentenced under the new “fake news” law. Earlier this year, after being held in a detention center in Moscow, he was transferred to a prison in the Vladimir region, where he has complained of being placed in solitary confinement in a cold cell without a mattress, blanket, or hot water. He is in ill health, but says he has received no treatment.

Following an appeal on his behalf to the International Committee of the Red Cross, an inspection was made and Gorinov was moved to a slightly better cell “with a window that opens and closes, a functioning toilet, and reportedly no mice.” [Id.]

That’s supposed to make him feel better.

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And while the Russian hierarchy continues its paranoid purge of alleged dissidents, the American and other hostages remaining in prison on specious political charges continue to await their turn. Now numbering sixteen, they are:

David Barnes
Staff Sergeant Gordon Black
Marc Fogel
Robert Gilman
Stephen James Hubbard
Ksenia Karelina
Andrey Kuznechyk (in Belarus)
Michael Travis Leake
Ihar Losik (in Belarus)
Daniel Martindale
Farid Mehralizada (in Azerbaijan)
Robert Shonov
Eugene Spector
Laurent Vinatier
Robert Romanov Woodland
Vladislav Yesypenko (in Crimea)

We must ensure that the new administration being inaugurated in Washington in January continues, without interruption, the work that has been underway up to this time. These hostages, and all the others whose names have not yet made it onto the list, must be brought home.

No excuses.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
12/1/24