People and Nature

A Moscow court has sentenced university teacher Aleksandr Nesterenko to three years’ imprisonment, for sharing Ukrainian songs on a social media account. Here is a translation of Nesterenko’s final statement to the court, which was published by Mediazona.

On 19 December, the Liublin district court sentenced Nesterenko, an associate professor in the faculty of philosophy at the Moscow state technical university, to three years, Mediazona stated in its introduction. The 62-year-old lecturer has been in custody since September 2024 because he saved on his page on VKontakte [a Russian language site similar to facebook] a clip of the songs “We are growing” by Voply Vidopliassov [Screams of Vidopliassov, a Ukrainian rock-and-roll band], “We were born at a great time” [a Ukrainian nationalist anthem] and “Bandera is our father, Ukraine our mother” [a Ukrainian song that Nesterenko denies having circulated]. Experts saw in these songs “evidence of incitement to violent actions against Russians, as a group defined by nationality” and “to the destruction of Russians as military opponents”.

To start with, Nesterenko was accused of “inciting hatred or antipathy” [Article 282:2 of the Russian criminal code] and “advocating extremism” [Article 280:2]. But in court the prosecutor said that the first charge was “unnecessary”, and asked that Nesterenko be sent to a prison colony for four years on the second charge. Before sentencing, Nesterenko made a final statement, which we reproduce here in full.

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I hope that this statement is my last in this auditorium, but not my last all together. To start with, I wish everyone here a happy Christmas, with hopes of miracles and of changes for the better. About this, there’s [Iosif] Brodsky’s poetry: the stronger is Herod, the more certain the inevitable wonder.[1] We’re putting our hopes on that.

“Try me for treason. I betrayed your deranged state”, the Russian anti-war protester Andrei Trofimov told the Second Western District Military Court in May.

In 2023, Trofimov was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, for opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine in social media posts, and trying to join the Free Russia Legion that fights on Ukraine’s side. At that hearing, Trofimov said he hoped for Ukraine’s victory, and called president Putin “a dickhead”.

On the basis of that statement alone, he was further accused of “justifying terrorism” and defaming the Russian army. For those “crimes”, the judge at the hearing in May this year, Vadim Krasnov, added three years to Trofimov’s sentence.

Before sentencing, Trofimov told the court that he had not justified terrorism, but supported the Ukrainian armed forces’ legitimate military actions against aggression, and had not defamed the Russian army whose actions were unconstitutional and illegal. He told the court that he considered himself guilty of a much more serious crime: treason – taking the enemy’s side in war.

The Second Western Military District court in Moscow last week sentenced Yulia Lemeshchenko to 19 years’ imprisonment for high treason, sabotage, and preparing and training for an act of terrorism.

Yulia, 42, is a Russian citizen, born in Staryi Oskol, in Belgorod region. She lived in Voronezh in southern Russia, until 2014. Then she moved to Kharkiv, Ukraine, with her son and her husband, who had found work there. Later on the couple separated.

Yulia took up powerlifting and in 2021 was named Ukrainian women’s champion.

In 2024 Yulia did military training in Kyiv – firearms, explosives and flying drones – and returned to Russia, via a third country. She sabotaged power transmission infrastructure near St Petersburg, and in Voronezh conducted surveillance on Aleksei Lobodoi, an air force commander responsible for bombing Kharkiv.

Yulia was arrested in January this year. She did not deny the facts outlined in the prosecution case, but told the court that “from a moral standpoint” she considered herself not guilty. This is a translation of her final statement to the court, published by Mediazona.

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As you see, I don’t have any sheets of paper and I haven’t especially prepared, but I think I will improvise. I will now probably say a few things that were already said during this hearing, but let this be a sort of summing-up, in a monologue.

In this speech to a Russian military court, Anton Khozhaev, a trainee officer accused of desertion to Ukraine’s side, urged Ukrainians to fight on and scorned the “bio-trash” that the Russian army had become.

Khozhaev is one of dozens of protesters who used their final speeches in court to denounce the war, and are now serving long prison sentences.

An event marking the publication of Voices Against Putin’s War, a book comprising English translations of some of the speeches, will be held next Thursday 20 November in London, and streamed on line (see details below).

Khozhaev was studying unmanned aviation at the Zhukovsky-Gagarin academy, where he started after graduating from the Military Aviation Technology University in 2020.

In 2022, in the days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he denounced the war and tried unsuccessfully to sever his employment contract. Prosecutors said he was arrested trying to cross the border to Ukraine.

Khozhaev’s speech, on 16 July in the Second Western District Military Court in Moscow, was reported by Sota Vision, an independent news outlet, and republished on the Poslednee Slovo (Last Word) web site. In this translation I have omitted some lines of poetry that he read out.

Khozhaev was sentenced to 23 years, the first five to be served in prison and the remainder in maximum security prison camps, for treason, terrorism, desertion and money laundering, all of which he denied. He is recognised by Memorial as a political prisoner. SP.

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Esteemed participants in the trial,

I believe that during this whole hearing, the prosecution have failed to prove my guilt, and, on the contrary, justified my actions.

By Simon Pirani. Republished from Jacobin, with thanks

On May 16, 2022, the Ukrainian artist Bohdan Ziza poured blue and yellow paint – the colours of his country’s flag – on to a municipal administration building in his home town, Yevpatoria, in Crimea.

Ziza posted a video of the action online, with a call to “adherents of graffiti culture, all the vandals of Crimea, Russia and Belarus” to protest against “the most horrific war” unleashed by “[Vladimir] Putin and the machine of state.” He was soon arrested and charged with “committing a terrorist act” and “incitement to terrorism”.

In June 2023, Ziza used his final statement to the Russian military court that sentenced him to fifteen years’ imprisonment to denounce the war again: “My action was a cry from the heart, from my conscience, to those who were and are afraid — just as I was afraid — but who also did not want this war.”

Ziza is one of ten anti-war protesters whose speeches are published this month, in English translation, in Voices Against Putin’s War: protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts. The collection also includes two statements made outside court, related interviews and letters, a summary of seventeen other anti-war speeches in court, and a survey of the anti-war protest movement and the repression against it.