Russia convicted a famous election supervisor and sentenced him to five years in prison
A Moscow court ruled on Wednesday that one of the leaders of a well-known independent election surveillance team was charged with organizing the work of a “unpopular” organization and sentenced him to five years in prison.
Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia's leading election observer Golos, rejected the allegations because of political motivation. The case against him is part of a long crackdown on Kremlin critics and rights activists who have gradually intensified after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Since its inception in 2000, Golos has been monitoring and exposing illegal acts in every election in Russia. Over the years, it has faced increasing pressure from the authorities.
In 2013, the group was designated as a “foreign agent”, a label that hints at additional government scrutiny and has a strong derogatory implication. Three years later, it was liquidated by the Russian Ministry of Justice as a non-governmental organization.
Golos continues to operate without being registered as a NGO, exposed to various election violations and was added to the new 'Foreign Agent' in 2021, created by the Ministry of Justice for groups not registered as Russian legal entities.
It has not been designated as “unpopular” – under the 2015 law, the tag makes participation with such organizations a criminal offence. But when it was a NGO, it was a member of the European Election Monitoring Network, which was declared “unpopular” in 2021, and the allegations against Melkonyants stemmed from.
In recent years, Russia’s independent journalists, critics, activists and opposition figures have been under increasing government pressure during the Ukrainian War.
Several independent news media and rights groups have been closed, marked as “foreign agents” or prohibited “unpopular.” Hundreds of activists and critics in the Kremlin face criminal charges.
