The Final Statement
‘These publications are aimed at dispelling the fog, so that my readers are not tempted by lies, do not become combatants, murderers or victims, and do not cause harm to the brotherly Ukrainian people.’
Your Honour, this criminal case is merely a small episode in a huge dispute, an enormous conflict that has been going on for decades. Understanding the nature of this larger, enormous conflict is fundamental to reaching a just resolution in this criminal case. Three decades ago, the dissolution of our common homeland, the USSR, took place.
The two closest peoples, the Russians and the Ukrainians, divided up their property, much like former spouses going through a divorce, and began living separately. They divided everything peacefully and amicably. They formalised their divorce in accordance with international law. They mutually and officially recognised that the territory of Crimea and Donetsk Region were parts of Ukraine, while Kursk and Belgorod Regions were parts of Russia.
Years passed, and people came to power in Russia who were convinced that this political divorce had not been a natural and voluntary process, but rather a terrible mistake, the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century, as Mr Putin described it. Well, it does happen that former spouses get back together, and countries that have split up reunite, out of love or for practical reasons, because it is more convenient, more profitable, and so on.
For several years, Russia’s current leadership made repeated attempts, with varying degrees of success, to entice the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian politicians into closer relations. At first, these attempts were unsuccessful. Our candidate, Yanukovych, was rejected by the Ukrainians during the so-called Orange Revolution. Then, on their second attempt, pro-Russian forces came to power in Ukraine. The long-awaited rapprochement between the two peoples began.
But it did not last long. The pro-Russian forces discredited themselves in the eyes of the Ukrainian people and became embroiled in corruption. Millions of people in Ukraine–I want to emphasise this, millions of people, not some miserable handful of conspirators–took part in the protests known throughout the world as the Revolution of Dignity. The Ukrainian parliament removed the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Yanukovych from office in accordance with the Constitution and laws of Ukraine.
A mass movement involving millions of people is commonly referred to as a revolution. Unfortunately, however, Russia’s top leadership publicly characterised this situation as an illegal coup d’état and began instilling this lie in the minds of Russian citizens. In my view, it was precisely this lie about an illegal coup d’état, followed by the decision to send Russian troops into Crimea based on that lie, that set us on the path towards the terrible situation in which we find ourselves today.
And this includes the present criminal case, because it is just one of countless consequences of this situation. The deployment of Russian troops in Crimea and its subsequent annexation by Russia were already acts of international aggression.
These actions fall under the definition of aggression set out in UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 of 1974, as do the actions of the so-called ‘vacationing soldiers’–Russian servicemen who were present in Donetsk and Luhansk Regions from 2014 until 24 February 2022. The former husband took to robbing and beating his former wife because she had changed her mind about getting back together with him. He had been beating her in secret for eight years, but on 24 February 2022, he began making an open international spectacle of it.
Such violence is very difficult to carry out without disguising it behind some seemingly noble objectives. Violence cannot exist on its own. It is inevitably intertwined with lies. The connection between them is the closest, most natural and profound one imaginable. Violence has nothing to hide behind except lies. And lies can only be sustained through violence.
Anyone who has once proclaimed violence to be their method must inexorably choose lies as their principle. At first, violence operates openly and even takes pride in itself. But as soon as it gains strength and establishes itself, it begins to feel the air thinning around it and can no longer survive except by shrouding itself in lies and concealing itself behind their honeyed words. It no longer always or necessarily resorts to strangling people outright; more often, it demands only that its subjects swear allegiance to lies, that they become complicit in them.
And the simple step of an ordinary, courageous person is this: not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! Let it come into the world and even reign over the world, but not through me. Writers and artists, however, can do more: defeat lies! In the struggle against lies, art has always triumphed and continues to triumph! Visibly, irrefutably, for all to see! Lies may withstand many things in this world, but not art.
And once the lies have been dispelled, the repulsive nakedness of violence will be exposed–and decrepit violence will collapse.
These are the words of the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his Nobel Lecture. But I believe they are highly relevant to the situation that has been unfolding over the past ten years, and they are relevant to this criminal case as well. This case is a small piece of the mosaic, but it is still important. I do not know whether fortunately or unfortunately, but these words apply to our case.
It is precisely this fog of lies, this entire system of lies, this whole looking-glass world in which everything is distorted, turned inside out and upside down, that is the target of the publications the prosecution has charged me with producing.
These publications are, of course, not criminal. Quite the opposite: they are aimed at achieving socially beneficial objectives. I have already said this during the closing arguments and when I began giving my testimony, but I would nevertheless like to remind you that I am accused of committing an egregious violation of the standards of my profession–one that tramples not only on the law but also on basic morality.
I am a journalist. I have been a journalist for a quarter of a century. I categorically reject this accusation. All these years, I have written what I believe to be the truth, however bitter it may be, out of love for people, not out of hatred for any particular political figures. And, in the spirit of fighting for the truth and living in truth, I personally, as the founder of the newspaper ЛИСток and the independent journalists’ outlet Листок, have published numerous articles, both during the period covered by the charges and earlier, going back to the spring of 2014. All these materials concern Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. When preparing for this trial, I began by reading the first article of the Criminal Code, which states that maintaining international peace and the security of humankind is one of the objectives of the Criminal Code. I am accused of undermining public security, whereas, in fact, my actions are aimed at maintaining international peace and the security of humankind. In reality, my actions are not directed towards unlawful ends, but towards objectives enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
Since 2014, I have published numerous articles concerning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The purpose of these publications was to reveal the truth about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and protect people from the sophisticated lies of Russian state propaganda.
And here I would like to add that the veil with which our authorities began shrouding this conflict in 2014 grew denser and denser. At first, they talked about ‘vacationing soldiers’ in the eastern parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions. Then came the downing of flight MH17, and they began inventing horrifying stories about that battle.
They claimed that fascist Banderites were in power in Ukraine, a country where far-right parties receive only three per cent of the vote. An entire virtual universe was being created in the information space, and this fog grew denser and denser with every passing year.
These publications are aimed at dispelling that fog, so that my readers are not tempted by lies, do not become combatants, murderers or victims, and do not cause harm to the brotherly Ukrainian people. We must minimise the economic damage caused by the war of aggression against Ukraine and prevent psychological harm to both our people and those on the other side of the front line. Just imagine: there are people on the other side too. There are men, women and children. They have souls too, and they are frightened too.
All these publications were also intended to prevent what might happen in the future–I do not know, perhaps some kind of retaliation by the Ukrainians. It is understandable that resentment is building up among them, and that they may be thinking about inflicting damage on us in return. And what do we see? Ukrainian troops have already entered Russian territory, essentially in retaliation for what we have been openly doing to them for two and a half years and secretly doing for eight years before that. They are defending the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine.
But there are also some points that matter for the administration of justice, although they are not as significant in the context of this enormous, terrible situation. I am accused of disseminating knowingly false information. This means that, firstly, the information must be false–that is, it must not correspond to reality. Secondly, the person disseminating it must know that it is false. And thirdly, it must presumably be proven that the information was disseminated by the very person accused of disseminating it. Yes. In fact, none of these three requirements has been met. But before I address this point, I would like to say something else. Let us suppose–I do not believe this, but let us suppose for a moment–that I am wrong. What if the publications I am accused of producing really were false? What if there was no massacre in Bucha? Or what if we accept the wonderful statement made by the Ministry of Defence in its briefing, in which it claimed that not a single civilian had been harmed during the 30 days when Russia controlled the territory of the Meschansky District, a suburb of Kyiv? Let us assume that this is true. Let us suppose that all the publications I am accused of producing were somehow, somehow, somehow nothing but lies, fabricated fakes. Even in that situation, provided that the armed conflict as a whole is of the very nature I described at the beginning–that is, a war of aggression–Article 41 of the Criminal Code would apply. It is entitled ‘Justifiable Risk’ and states that an act violating the formal provisions of the Criminal Code intended to protect public interests does not constitute a crime. Even if those publications had been false. But the fact is that the information and publications you accuse me of producing are, of course, not false in any way. They are all the bitter truth. They are the truth.
Please excuse me, but it has now been more than two years. If this information did not correspond to reality, it would have been refuted long ago. We live in a modern world of information technology. This information has been recognised by the largest international organisations, including organisations of which Russia itself is a member. It has been recognised by the United Nations and by the UN Human Rights Council. Unfortunately, we petitioned the court to have the reports of the UN Human Rights Council, as well as statements by a number of UN officials, read out in court. The court, despite the fact that these reports had been included in the criminal case file during the preliminary investigation, rejected our petition. Nevertheless, I quoted some of these reports, including their most important passages, during my testimony, since I was familiar with them, had read them and had also referred to them during the closing arguments. In other words, the information I am accused of disseminating corresponds to reality. Even if it did not, under the provisions of the Criminal Code article under which I am charged, the prosecution would have to prove that. The burden of proof rests with you. You would have to prove that this information did not correspond to reality and that the person who disseminated it knew this for certain at the time of publication.
As in many similar cases across Russia, the prosecution acts as though the word ‘knowingly’ does not even appear in this article. It assumes that if a statement made by an opposition media outlet or opposition Telegram channel contradicts a statement by Konashenkov, the head of the Ministry of Defence’s press service, then this is not merely a contradiction, nor even simply a lie told by a journalist–it is a deliberate lie. A journalist was supposedly obliged, firstly, to familiarise themselves with what Mr Konashenkov had said and, secondly, to believe it as the ultimate truth, beyond any doubt, criticism or question. Yet during this trial, it was demonstrated that even the authorities themselves subsequently retracted a number of statements that they had initially presented as the ultimate truth, cast in stone. These statements were questioned at the level of the State Duma, by members of the State Duma themselves. They were questioned by high-ranking government officials and by state media outlets, which, as far as I understand, the prosecution also believes must be trusted.
And there is one more point. It is actually very important for the sentencing, although it has little bearing on the larger, terrible situation I have been describing. The prosecution has completely failed to prove that I was the person who published this information. It has failed. You have not managed to prove it. Moreover, the criminal case file contains a final and binding court ruling establishing that, during the period covered by the charges, at least one of the publications for which the newspaper ЛИСток was fined 300,000 roubles was published by none other than Viktor Filippovich Rau, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. He publicly stated that he alone was responsible for the publications in question during the period covered by the charges and that he had made the relevant decisions. As the prosecution, you should have tried somehow to prove that this was not true. Instead, various measures were taken to prevent this evidence from being admitted.
To begin with, a special lawyer travelled to Tbilisi, where Viktor Filippovich was staying at the beginning of the war, if I remember correctly, and took a statement from him. This statement was submitted to the preliminary investigation and included in the case file, but the court refused to examine it. The court refused, despite the existence of an international treaty that allows a person to be questioned remotely via video link. We are living in the twenty-first century, after all. The court refused to question Viktor Filippovich. Was it inconvenient for you?
A 15-person investigative team was assigned to my case. This is not the first time I have been a defendant in a politically motivated criminal case. In 2010–2011, when I was brought to trial at the behest of former Governor Berdnikov, there was a team of eight people. Now the team has doubled in size. And yet these 15 people still failed to establish who had actually disseminated what. Did you have suspicions that you were unable to substantiate properly? Without direct evidence, the investigators were unable to… Normally, when cases like this are investigated, they try to seize some device and examine its correspondence.
The investigators failed to seize anything of the sort. Instead, they spent a year trying to patch things together with the shoddiest of evidence. They questioned more than 20 people, including members of the editorial staff. The investigation committed some truly egregious violations. In particular, if I remember correctly, the statements of three or four witnesses were simply copied from one interrogation record into another. Entire passages, literally two, three or four paragraphs long, were copied word for word. And when these witnesses were questioned from the witness stand, they all repudiated those statements and said: ‘Guys, we never said that.’ So not only are you prosecuting me for something for which people should be commended rather than prosecuted, but you cannot even properly prove that I did it.
The criminal case file contains some truly remarkable inspection reports, dated, roughly speaking, from mid-March, while the files allegedly obtained during these inspections bear completely different dates. Investigators, law enforcement officers: not only are you engaged in protecting this veil of lies, you are doing so incompetently. Incompetently! If you are going to serve your master Putin, at least do it so thoroughly that no one can find fault with your work. But, excuse me, statements were simply attributed to witnesses while they were in bed. And then every single witness repudiated them from this very stand. And the prosecution, throughout this entire trial, which lasted more than a year, reduced all of this to one sentence. The respected prosecutor stated that pressure had been exerted on the witness during the court hearing. In other words, not at the Investigative Committee, where, as the witness testified, I was very frightened, but here, in this courtroom. Apparently, the defendant had been exerting pressure from his cage for an entire year, and no one could protect the witnesses from this terrifying defendant.
There is another point worth noting here. What has been happening to us in recent years–the state’s fabrication of stories about Banderites in Ukraine, claims that there is no war there, let alone a war of aggression, and that what is happening is something else entirely–is by no means a new phenomenon. It happened in the Soviet Union too. During the war in Afghanistan, people were told that it was not a war but international assistance to the brotherly Afghan people. Now we are being told that this is not a war but a special military operation. And even 2,000 years ago, there was a famous story about an all-powerful minister serving a Chinese emperor who needed to eliminate his opponents. He brought an animal with antlers from the imperial park into the palace and declared: ‘Look, gentlemen, fellow ministers, this is a horse.’ The ministers were divided: some agreed that it was a horse, while others objected that it was a deer. Those who called the deer a deer were executed for insufficient loyalty. You are doing exactly the same thing now. You are trying to intimidate the residents of the Altai Republic, who understand perfectly well that a deer is a deer, a war of aggression is a war of aggression, and zinc coffins are zinc coffins. And Putin, excuse me, is a war criminal, not a president. He is a man who swore in 2000 that he would serve two four-year terms, yet he has now been in power for 24 years.
He has usurped the power he holds. What he is doing now is a direct consequence of his refusal to step down. The contradictions that inevitably accumulate in societies like this always lead to a ruler who refuses to leave office seeking a way to release the pressure. This has happened countless times throughout human history. When a ruler comes to power and refuses to make way for a younger generation, he drags his country into war to justify his continued existence and remain in power until his death. Excuse me, but that is precisely what is happening now. And this was already clear in 2012, when the constitutional amendments were put to a vote. Western journalists said at the time that what was happening was typical of underdeveloped African countries, where democratically elected leaders turn into dictators and change their constitutions to remain in power for decades, as had happened in Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. All of this came to pass, and one of its consequences was the war of aggression.
This war, in fact, has no good outcome for those who started it. Either they will somehow bring it to an end while maintaining the appearance of victory, or, two or three months after hostilities cease on terms that the Russian people will regard as defeat, our country will face something it has already experienced: in 1905, after losing the Russo-Japanese War; in 1917, when we failed to defeat Germany; and in 1991, when we withdrew our troops from Afghanistan in disgrace. The same thing will happen as has happened in many countries where leaders, initially elected democratically, have clung to power through violence and elaborate manipulation. In Russia, of course, the second method–elaborate manipulation–is the one being used. But the problem with such manipulation is that tension in society inevitably builds up, and eventually either the pressure blows the lid off or it has to be released somehow. What we are witnessing now is an attempt to release that pressure. People in the West understand this better than we do, because that is where the smartest and most talented people are, and no one will allow us to win.
That is why the sentence handed down is so outrageous: eight and a half years in prison and a four-year ban on working as a journalist. I am being forbidden from practising the profession I have devoted my entire adult life to. But sooner or later, a just verdict will be handed down in this case, and I will go from being the defendant to being the victim in a case involving obstruction of a journalist’s lawful professional activities and abuse of office by those who organised all this. There will probably also be a charge of negligence, since the investigator handling such an important political case did not even bother to retype the statements he had copied from one interrogation record to another.
Those who initiated this case in the Altai Republic, in particular Senator Poletaev, who filed a denunciation against me on 15 March 2022, with the criminal case opened the very next day, on 16 March, will also stand trial, I believe. Mr Poletaev and Ms Gigel, two representatives of the Altai Republic, should also be held liable under Article 353 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation–planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression–given the specific provisions of the Russian Constitution. The blood of hundreds of young men from the Altai Republic is on their hands. Their graves have now appeared in cemeteries, or their bodies have never been found and have been left to fertilise Ukraine’s black soil.
But most importantly, I hope that one day I will have the opportunity to attend the trial of those officials of the Russian Federation who unleashed the war of aggression against Ukraine. And of those ‘colleagues’ who call themselves journalists but are in fact propagandists, violating Article 354 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation–public calls for the initiation of a war of aggression–and poisoning the minds of millions of Russians with lies. I hope that one day I will be sitting in the courtroom with a voice recorder, documenting the testimony of these people. I wonder whether some of them genuinely believe that their actions are right. But I am certain that a significant number of them act out of self-interest and conformism rather than any lofty moral principles. I hope for this. I pray for it. And now, Your Honour, deliver your verdict, and we shall see what happens next.
27 August 2024
Gorno-Altaysk City Court, Gorno-Altaysk, Altai Republic
Source: Telegram channel ЛИСток
Read more about the case: Memorial
Photo: ЛИСток, Altai Republic