Translated material
Political prisoner managed to escape from Russia
Moscow activist Konstantin Kotov, who was accused of financing an extremist organization with donations from FBK and was put under house arrest, left Russia. The former defendant in the case of the 2019 Moscow protests reported to OVD-Info about his departure to Lithuania.
“I realized that playing some kind of roulette with the court and the investigation makes absolutely no sense. It’s better to take fate into your own hands and gain your own freedom,” Kotov said in an interview with Mediazona. While under house arrest, Kotov learned that another activist, Ivan Tishchenko, received a real sentence in a similar criminal case.
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Kotov said that the reason for his criminal case was donations to FBK totaling 3,500 rubles. He said that in this way he wanted to express solidarity with the organization after the authorities recognized it as “extremist.”
“I went to rallies that were organized by FBK, which were organized by Alexey, I met - tried to meet - Alexey in Vnukovo, I closely followed his fate: first, the next criminal case, then his difficult life in the colony of the city of Pokrov,” said Kotov. Alexei Navalny spent part of his sentence in the same colony where Kotov had previously been imprisoned.
The first criminal case against programmer Konstantin Kotov was opened in 2019 under an article about repeated violation of the rules for holding pickets and rallies (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, also known as “Dadinskaya”). He was accused of receiving several administrative protocols during the year for participating in public rallies and calling for them.
In 2019, Konstantin Kotov often took part in protests that were not approved by the authorities in support of political prisoners and against violations in the Moscow City Duma elections. For this, the police drew up at least five administrative reports against the activist.
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In September 2019, the court sentenced Kotov to four years in prison for repeated violations of the rules for holding rallies. Later, the Constitutional Court decided to review Kotov’s sentence, after which his sentence was reduced to one and a half years. He was released from penal colony IK-2 in the city of Pokrov, Vladimir region, in December 2020.
The first defendant in the FBK donation case was journalist and co-founder of Dissernet Andrei Zayakin. He also managed to leave Russia.
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