Russian poets given long jail terms for reciting verses against Ukraine war
Al Jazeera
Artyom Kamardin, 33, and Yegor Shtovba, 23, sentenced for ‘undermining national security’, ‘inciting hatred’.
A court in Moscow has sentenced two Russian men to several years in prison for reciting poetry against the war in Ukraine during an anti-mobilisation protest last year as the Kremlin presses on with its crackdown on dissent.
Artyom Kamardin, 33, was sentenced to seven years in jail on Thursday after being convicted of making calls “undermining national security” and “inciting hatred”. The charges were linked to him reading his anti-war poems at the rally in Moscow in September 2022.
The Tverskoy District Court also sentenced Yegor Shtovba, 23, to a five and a half year term on the same charges, after he participated in the event and recited Kamardin’s verses.
The demonstration last year was held days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilisation of 300,000 reservists amid Russia’s military setbacks in Ukraine. The widely unpopular move prompted hundreds of thousands to flee the country to avoid being recruited into the military.
Kamardin read out his poem, “Kill me, militia man!”, ending with the line, “Glory to Kievan Rus, Novorossiya – suck!” – using the historic terms for Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and a term from days of the Russian Empire that Moscow uses for the area of southeastern Ukraine it is trying to annex, respectively.
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