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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/bangthetank on 2023-10-11 17:42:51.
Veteran activist fined for 'fascism' article after comparing Putin's Russia to '1984'
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Veteran Russian rights activist Oleg Orlov was convicted and fined on Wednesday for “discrediting” the armed forces after telling a Moscow court that Russia had descended into a totalitarian state resembling George Orwell’s “1984”.
Far from repenting of that statement, he defiantly used his closing speech to declare that Russians were living in Orwell’s dystopian world as their country waged war on its neighbour while claiming to support freedom, peace and security.
Orlov was supported in court by Dmitry Muratov, co-winner of the Nobel prize in 2021, whose Novaya Gazeta newspaper was forced to shut down soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Muratov said that just as dissident Andrei Sakharov had predicted that the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan would lead the Soviet Union to disaster, so Orlov was justified in warning that Russia was following a path towards self-destruction in Ukraine.
The Kremlin says its “special military operation” was justified by the need to protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine from “genocide” and to “demilitarise” and “denazify” the country - arguments rejected by Kyiv and its Western allies as a false pretext for an imperial-style war.
The prosecution in Orlov’s case said the fact that the court hearing was open to the media, and that Muratov had been allowed to speak despite being designated a “foreign agent” by the state, showed that freedom of speech was protected in Russia.
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