Prosecutor proposing a sentence of two years and 11 months she argued the need to avoid a possible relapse. The defense maintains the defendant’s innocence. “The court will decide on the sentence. He will announce it on February 27 at 12:00 Moscow time (10:00 CET),” said judge Jelena Astachova, according to the TASS agency.
Orlov appeared in court for the second time in a short time, the previous trial ended with a fine. He refused to appear before the court, but reserved the right to speak at the end of the trial.
A long line of people who came to support Orlov stood in front of the court today. There were representatives of the embassies of the Czech Republic, Poland, the USA, Britain, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Austria, Australia, Latvia, Sweden, Belgium, as well as the representation of the European Union in Russia, Mediazona calculated. She added that Orlov’s wife also stood in the queue together with Natalija, the widow of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Orlov entered the courtroom with Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial in his hands. “What else is left for us but to read Kafka?” said defense attorney Katerina Tertuchinová.
A new trial for Orlov was ordered by the Moscow City Court in mid-December last year. Before the trial, Orlov repeated his criticism of the Russian war campaign and insisted that he was a true patriot. He condemned the actions of the prosecution and said that he was being persecuted because he dared to publicly criticize the actions of the authorities. He came to the court with his luggage already packed in case he was imprisoned right in the courtroom. He told reporters after the meeting that he had no plans to unpack because the authorities clearly wanted to put him behind bars.
The payment of creditors of the bankrupt Sberbank CZ will begin on March 18. Creditors, of whom there are over 15,300, should receive approximately 57 billion crowns.
“After the High Court found LitFin SPV 9’s appeal without merit, we have to complete or repeat some of the processes necessary for the payment. At this point I can confirm with certainty that the payout will start on March 18th. More than 15,300 creditors can look forward to 95 percent of their established claims,” stated Sberbank insolvency administrator Jiřina Lužová.
The Prague Municipal Court declared bankruptcy on Sberbank CZ at the end of August last year after the Czech National Bank legally revoked the bank’s banking license at the beginning of May. Steps to revoke the license were initiated by the CNB on February 28, 2022. The reason was the deterioration of the situation of Sberbank CZ due to the outflow of deposits after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A Moscow court today sentenced the well-known human rights defender Oleg Orlov, who criticized the Russian leadership for the war against Ukraine, to 2.5 years in prison. He was convicted of repeatedly “discrediting the army”, the media reported. He was taken straight from the courtroom to prison. The 70-year-old Orlov is associated with the Memorial NGO, which won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize and was banned by the Russian authorities a year earlier.
While most of the opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin were imprisoned or emigrated, Orlov refused to go into exile because he considered it important for critical voices to be heard in Russia itself, the AFP agency wrote. “I do not regret anything,” he said before sentencing.
“They condemned the chairman of Memorial Orlov for an anti-war article in which he called Putin’s regime fascist. In court, Orlov read The Trial of Franz Kafka,” server Meduza noted.
Members of the European Parliament today overwhelmingly approved an increase in the multi-annual EU budget until 2027, including the provision of 50 billion euros (over 1.2 trillion crowns) Ukraine. Following the EP’s previous agreement with the member states, Kyiv should receive 33 billion in the form of loans and 17 billion in subsidies over the next four years.
The consent of the European Parliament was a condition for the European bloc to increase its budget for the period until 2027. Last year’s European Commission proposal was initially blocked by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who, however, withdrew his veto at an extraordinary summit in early February. The member states thus agreed to add 65 billion euros to the multiannual financial framework; part of them is the aforementioned 50 billion for Ukraine. The rest of the money will go to expenses related to the fight against illegal migration, to external relations or to common defense.
499 MPs agreed to the budget increase today, there were 67 against and 31 abstentions. The allocation of money for Kyiv alone received even more support with 536 votes.
Orlov is one of the most famous and respected defenders of human rights in Russia, he has been a member of the leadership of the Memorial since 1999. In December 2021, a court ordered the dissolution of Memorial. This organization became famous for exposing the crimes of communism and Stalinism in the former Soviet Union and gradually became the largest association for the defense of human rights in Russia. The year before, Memorial won the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Belarusian dissident Ales Byalyatsky and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties.
Last October, a Moscow court fined Orlov 150,000 rubles (almost 35,000 CZK) for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. Surprisingly, the prosecutor’s office did not ask for Orlov’s imprisonment, but a fine of 250,000 rubles. The indictment relied on Orlov’s article from last November, in which he wrote that Russia had descended into fascism under President Vladimir Putin. Due to the defendant’s age and health, the prosecution proposed a fine instead of prison. According to some sources, she could have requested up to three years, according to others, up to five years behind bars. The convict described the sentence as “mild, but illegal and unjust”.
The prosecutor’s office appealed against the verdict in October. She explained the change in her position by saying that Orlov “feels political and ideological hatred for the Russian Federation” and also, along with Memorial, “continues to subvert the stability of civil society”.
Provisions on penalties for discrediting or spreading false news about the Russian armed forces were adopted by Russian lawmakers shortly after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. According to opponents of the regime, the draconian punishments are intended to silence all criticism of the war.
