Russia jails prominent vote monitor for five years
Russia on Wednesday sentenced a high-profile election monitor to five years in prison, part of an intensifying crackdown by the Kremlin against independent critics and opponents.
Grigory Melkonyants, 44, is the co-chair of the Russian vote-monitoring NGO Golos, which records alleged fraud in Russian elections.
"Melkonyants is found guilty and sentenced to five years in a general regime prison colony," state media reported the judge as saying in Moscow's Basmanny district court.
Melkonyants was arrested in August 2023, as part of a crackdown on Kremlin critics and opponents that has accelerated amid Moscow's military offensive on Ukraine.
Prosecutors accused him of working with a European election monitoring association -- the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations -- outlawed as an "undesirable organisation" in Russia.
Being declared "undesirable" effectively bans the group from operating in Russia and makes anyone who works for or collaborates with them liable to prosecution.
Melkonyants proclaimed his innocence throughout the trial and denounced conditions in the jail where he was being held.
He said he had been forced to change cell eight times and had more than 100 different cellmates since his arrest.
In his final statement to the court earlier this week he said he felt "joy at having become stronger though this ordeal and not losing faith.
"During these years, hundreds of thousands of honest and well-educated people have become observers," he added.
His lawyer Mikhail Biryukov has denounced the charges as "baseless".
The authorities want to "intimidate many independent observers so they give up monitoring or remain silent about what they see during these elections", said Biryukov.
Russia had labelled Golos a "foreign agent" -- a term used to stigmatise and target independent civil society and media outlets -- but it disbanded and reformed as a new entity.
The group runs an online interactive map with reports of election violations in national and regional ballots across Russia.
Independent observers have long denounced Russian votes as neither free nor fair.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was re-elected last year with 87 percent of the vote in a contest in which all genuine competitors were barred from standing.
International and domestic observers have for years reported widespread ballot stuffing and voter coercion.
bur/jj
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Ampere Analysis Breaks Down The Threat U.S. Tariffs Would Pose To European Film & TV
Speaking at NEM in Croatia, Ampere Analysis Co-Founder Guy Bisson ran the rule over the so-called plan to save Hollywood from Jon Voight and associates, and assessed the potential impact on the European film and TV biz. 'A 120% tariff on incentives to cancel out global schemes is patently ridiculous and obviously very damaging, potentially, to the European industry,' he said. 'Tax treaties, local tax treaties in the U.S., and incentive schemes, just like we use in Europe, clearly, are the way to go if you want to re-enliven your industries.' More from Deadline Donald Trump's Tariffs Deemed Unlawful & Blocked By Trade Court; White House Appeals Instantly Life After Peak TV: "It's A New World Order... There's A Rethink Required" - Berlin Streamer Content Spend To Top Commercial Broadcasters For First Time In 2025 - Report A draft of Voight's Make Hollywood Great Again plan, obtained by Deadline, included a mixture of production incentives and a 120% tariff on the value of a foreign incentive received. After he presented the plan to Donald Trump, the President public proposed a 100% tariff on all U.S. film imports, including productions that shoot in other countries. The NEM confab and sales market is held annually in Dubrovnik. The latest edition kicked off, Monday, with Bisson's session, which was entitled: 'Content Trends in the Era of Trump: Protectionism, Production and International Markets'. The Ampere executive set the scene by showing how the European content business has benefitted from the U.S. studios widening their production bases and streamers setting up shop in several parts of the continent, resulting in orders for thousands of hours of first-run programming. He also said international markets are key to those same U.S. giants monetizing their series and movies with, for example, 54% of the total box office for U.S. films coming from international markets, according to Ampere. Getting into the weeds on the suggested measures, he said a 120% tariff on any incentive received overseas is 'one of the most concerning aspects of the proposal, effectively closing the door on U.S. producers making use of any overseas incentive.' He went on to break down what might happen if the proposed measure were introduced with a slide that pinpointed the UK and Spain as the two biggest potential losers in Europe, given the volumes of U.S. production in both countries. 'Obviously the big European markets – the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany – are on that list, but so is Poland, for example, and Turkey, and the Scandinavian markets. They have been the [among] biggest beneficiaries of that 'runaway' production.' Speaking about the notion of tax treaties with certain countries for films substantially produced in U.S., Bisson said the idea is interesting: 'While you still have to make a majority, or spend a majority of the budget, in the U.S., you can effectively stack or double dip incentive schemes through those treaties.' He also said any re-introduction of rules that prohibit networks (and now, SVODs) fully owning shows 'would remove one of the things that's annoyed producers so much, which is streamers taking all rights in perpetuity.' Trump has said that he would meet with industry officials, and the White House said no final decisions have been made regarding the plan. Voight, Sylvester Stallone and a group that included studios and unions later wrote a letter to Trump emphasizing the need for production incentives While punchy, the NEM presentation was, thusly, analyzing what are currently theoretical scenarios. Bisson said that the best hope for the European biz is that theory never becomes practice. 'None of this is actually happening or being put in place yet, it's just a suggestion,' he said. 'Who can predict what Trump will do next. You may have heard the nickname that Trump has been given: TACO; Trump, Always Chickens Out on tariffs. That's what we can hope will happen again when it comes to our industry and the suggested protectionism being placed on film and TV.' Ted Johnson contributed to this report. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery Tony Awards: Every Best Musical Winner Since 1949 Tony Awards: Every Best Play Winner Since 1947
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Russia's lead negotiator in Istanbul claims Russia's terms at 2022 talks with Ukraine were "softer"
Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation at recent peace talks in Istanbul, has said that if Ukraine had agreed to Russia's terms in 2022, its terms would have been less harsh. Source: Medinsky in an interview with RT, the Russian state-controlled international news television network, as quoted by Russian media Details: Medinsky claimed that if Ukraine had been ready and "if it had been making its own decisions", a peace agreement could have been signed as early as 28 February 2022 and would have had "softer" terms than in 2025. After all, the pseudo-historian claimed, "all they wanted was for Ukraine not to join NATO and to say no to the deployment of foreign military bases on its territory". There had also been discussions about making Russian an official language in Ukraine, recognising the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and officially recognising Crimea as Russian, because, in Medinsky's fantasies, "that was the most democratically held referendum imaginable". Medinsky said that after the Russian delegation presented the draft treaty in 2022, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "kept silent for two weeks" and met with representatives from the UK and the US during that time. The Russians were then told "Our foreign partners are opposed to us entering into the agreement – which we had already agreed on," Medinsky claims. Background: After the second round of talks on 2 June, Russian state news agencies published the text of Russia's "memorandum of settlement" with proposals for a ceasefire. In the memorandum, Russia has demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson oblasts. It also calls for Ukraine's neutrality, a ban on the deployment of foreign troops on the territory of Ukraine, and its rejection of nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported, citing sources and the relevant draft agreements, that in April 2022, Russia effectively disrupted peace talks with Ukraine by inserting a clause in the draft agreement stating that it would have the right to veto the international community's response in the event of a repeat attack on Ukraine. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
No Russians on border of Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts
The Khortytsia Operational Strategic Group has denied Russian claims that they have reached the border of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Source: Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for the Khortytsia Operational Strategic Group, on the national joint 24/7 newscast on 9 June Quote from Trehubov: "No, there are no Russians on the border of Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. Yes, there is fighting in the west of Donetsk Oblast, but the Russians have not reached the administrative border. Their reports about this are not true; they are lies." Details: Trehubov said there is significant Russian pressure along the entire length of the front line on the Pokrovsk front. There are always more than 50 combat engagements per day, whereas on other fronts there are fewer. He added that the Pokrovsk front has been Russia's main front for more than two years. Background: On 9 June, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed that its units are "continuing to advance deep into the enemy's defence and have increased the area of liberated [sic] territories in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast". Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
