It took about a year for authorities to close in on 51-year-old musician and environmentalist Alexander Bakhtin, one of the thousands of Russians arrested for criticizing the Ukraine offensive. Unlike the audiences of high-profile critics, the trials of ordinary Russians usually take place away from public attention.
Bakhtin’s audience was attended by one friend and by his mother. She was summoned to court as a witness in the prosecution against her own son.
Alexander “wouldn’t hurt a fly. He protects animals, he’s an environmentalist,” Lyudmyla Bakhtina said, with tears in her eyes.
Photo: AFP
The 79-year-old barely got to brush the arm of her son as he was led, handcuffed, into the courtroom.
She had seen him twice since his detention for spreading “fake information” about the Russian army — for which he faces up to 10 years in prison.
The accusation is based on three social media posts from March and April last year, in which Alexander Bakhtin talked about civilian deaths and blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the conflict.
Photo: AFP
A year later, he was arrested in his hometown of Mytishchi, in Moscow’s suburbs.
“Everyone in our neighborhood was shocked,” Lyudmyla Bakhtina said.
At the stand, the elderly woman wearing a purple dress and cardigan told the court: “I signed my testimony without reading it.”
Lyudmyla Bakhtina said that the written statement seemed long compared to the interview she had with the investigator.
“Do you think that the Russian army is carrying out a genocide of the Ukrainian population?” the prosecutor asked her.
“I don’t,” she answered.
“What about your son?... And what’s his opinion on the president?” they asked.
“My son is a pacifist, he is against the war. So am I. You can arrest me too,” she said.
The judge then invited Alexander Bakhtin to question his mother.
“When they interrogated you on March 6, did they tell you that you had the right to refuse to testify against me?” Alexander Bakhtin asked in a hoarse voice.
“No,” she said.
The audience was postponed until tomorrow, a standard procedure.
More than 20,000 people have been detained in Russia for protesting the conflict in Ukraine, a tally by independent rights group OVD-Info showed.
Thousands of people have been charged with publishing “fake information” on the offensive, others accused of army “discredit.”
A few hours before Alexander Bakhtin’s audience, in another suburb of Moscow, 75-year-old Anatoly Roshchin also faced trial. Lobnya City Court charged the retired aeronautical engineer with discrediting the army over some online publications.
He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
“Such cases are becoming more and more common,” his lawyer Evgenia Grigorieva said.
At the beginning of the conflict, Roshchin held a lone picket protest in front of the Lobnya city hall.
“My country, you have gone insane,” his sign read.
Most passersby pretended not to see him.
“They were afraid,” he said.
“If Russians weren’t afraid of going to the streets, there wouldn’t be a war. We are responsible for it,” he added.
Feeling “guilty” about Ukraine, Roshchin said he would keep posting on social media despite the ongoing trial.
“An opponent who whispers: ‘Glory to Ukraine’ in his wife’s ear is not really an opponent,” he said.
“I want Ukrainians to know that not all Russians are cowards,” he added.
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