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Soviet-era dissident jailed for 16 years over anti-war views
The Guardian
|March 22, 2025
A Soviet-era dissident has been jailed for 16 years in Russia for his anti-war views, in a case that observers say highlights how the country's repression now exceeds even that of parts of the communist period.
Alexander Skobov, a 67-year-old lifelong dissident, was sentenced yesterday by a military court in St Petersburg over a social media post supporting Ukraine's 2022 strike on the Crimea Bridge, as well as his alleged involvement with the foreign-based opposition group the Free Russia Forum.
Skobov published the dissident Soviet journal Perspektivy in what was then Leningrad, and spoke out against Russia's wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine from 2014.
In the Soviet Union, Skobov was repeatedly charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" and was twice forcibly confined to psychiatric institutions. He spent a total of six years in Soviet psychiatric wards that functioned as prisons.
His sentence yesterday in effect amounts to life imprisonment, given his age and frail health. Skobov's lawyer said her client had diabetes, hepatitis C, bronchial asthma and glaucoma.
This story is from the March 22, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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