Russia jails prominent vote monitor for five years
The Hindu
Russian election monitor sentenced to 5 years in prison amid Kremlin crackdown on critics and opponents.
Russia on Wednesday (May 14, 2025) 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.
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