Alexander Skobov Slams Putin Before Getting 16-Year Sentence
In his last words before being condemned, Skobov, a former Soviet dissident, and current anti-war voice, called Putin the new Hitler.
HAVANA TIMES – A Russian court sentenced dissident Alexander Skobov to 16 years in prison on Friday for his anti-war views — right after he used his closing declaration to rail against Vladimir Putin’s regime and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
According to Mediazona, a St. Petersburg military court convicted Skobov, 67, of “justifying terrorism” and “participating in a terrorist organization” for a social media post supporting a Ukrainian attack on the Crimean Bridge and for his alleged involvement in the Free Russia Forum, an opposition platform based in Lithuania that Russia outlawed as “undesirable” in 2023.
The court also mandated that Skobov spend the first three years of his prison term in a maximum-security facility, ordered him to pay a 300,000-ruble fine (equivalent to $3,550), and banned him from administering websites for four years after his release. Prosecutors had requested an even harsher sentence: 18 years in a maximum-security prison.
In his closing statement, which Mediazona published in full, Skobov reiterated his support for Ukraine, comparing President Putin to Adolf Hitler and condemning US President Donald Trump for engaging in an “imperialist conspiracy” with regard to Ukraine.
“Since 1945, Europe has been building a world in which predators should no longer be the masters of life. A world based on the principles of law, justice, freedom and humanism,” Skobov said, as quoted by Mediazona. “Today, this world is being smashed to pieces from two sides by a pair of scoundrels — one in the Kremlin and one in Washington. People with pro-fascist values have come to power in the US. We are witnessing a disgusting attempt at a purely imperialist conspiracy between two predators. A conspiracy even more vile than the 1938 Munich conspiracy.”
Skobov then said: “Death to the Russian-fascist invaders! Death to Putin, the new Hitler, a murderer and a scoundrel. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!”
“Today I will be asked if I plead guilty. Well, I’m the one making the accusation here. I accuse Putin’s entire ruling clique, which is built on corpses, of preparing, unleashing, and waging a war of aggression, of war crimes in Ukraine, of political terror in Russia, and of the corruption of my people,” he concluded. “And I ask this of the servants of Putin’s regime present here, who are the small wheels and cogs of his repressive regime: Do you plead guilty to complicity in Putin’s crimes?”
‘A draconian sentence’
A Soviet-era dissident, Skobov was repeatedly convicted of “anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation” in the late 1970s and 1980s, and subjected to forced psychiatric treatment. He was also a defendant in the Soviet Union’s last “anti-Soviet agitation” case, which was dropped in 1989 after the corresponding article was struck from the Criminal Code.
As a history teacher in the 1990s, Skobov remained a staunch critic of the Russian authorities, speaking out against the war in Chechnya and organizing opposition rallies in St. Petersburg. He also opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. That same year, two unidentified men attacked Skobov with knives outside his home, leaving him blind in one eye.
According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, Skobov’s friends and family believe the 2014 attack was “retribution” for his criticism of Putin’s regime. But this didn’t stop him from openly opposing Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Skobov was arrested in early April 2024 on charges of “justifying terrorism” in his social media posts. This came after he failed to appear before investigators, who had summoned him for questioning that February over his alleged involvement in the Free Russia Forum. In the intervening weeks, Russia’s Justice Ministry declared Skobov a “foreign agent.”
In a comment to The Guardian after Friday’s hearing, Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch decried Skobov’s sentence as “draconian” and emblematic of the Russian authorities’ “war against dissent” inside the country. “It is particularly poignant that Skobov had spent years in a Soviet prison for having exercised his freedom of opinion all those years back — and over four decades later history is repeating itself,” she added.
