NewsSociety

Moscow court sentences 18-year-old activist to 7 years in prison for plot to kill Russian soldier

Gagik Grigoryan. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova / Mediazona

Gagik Grigoryan. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova / Mediazona

A Moscow court has sentenced an 18-year-old Russian left-wing activist to seven years in prison over an alleged plot to kill a Russian military officer, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Wednesday.

Gagik Grigoryan, a native of Kursk in western Russia, was arrested in October 2023 at the age of 17 and subsequently added to the Russian government’s list of “terrorists and extremists”. He was found guilty of treason, plotting a terror attack, storing explosives and participating in a “terrorist community”, Mediazona wrote.

The details of Grigoryan’s case are unknown to the public, as his case was heard behind closed doors, an increasingly common practice in political cases designed to minimise press coverage. According to the Left Socialist Action political group, of which Grigoryan was a member before his arrest, his family elected not to publicise his case in the hope he would be granted a more lenient sentence.

Grigoryan’s friends previously told independent news outlet SOTAvision that they had not received letters from him since August, when he was transferred to Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison.

In one of the few letters cited by Russian human rights groups, Grigoryan wrote that he was accused of “plotting to kill a Russian army lieutenant colonel”, said Solidarity Zone, a grassroots initiative that supports Russians persecuted for opposing the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

While Grigoryan was unable to write more about the accusations against him due to prison censorship, Left Socialist Action suggested in December that the case was “either a completely made-up story or some kind of set-up organised by the FSB”.

pdfshareprint
Editor in chief — Kirill Martynov. Terms of use. Privacy policy.