Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the independent election surveillance business Golos, was given a five-year prison sentence by a Moscow court on Wednesday on suspicion of organizing the actions of an “undesirable” business, a charge that human rights activists have long criticized as politically motivated. Throughout the course of his test, Melkonyants, who was detained in August 2023, has pleaded honest. He was accused of continuing to work with the Montenegrin-based European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations ( ENEMO), which Russian authorities had declared “undesirable” in 2021. Melkonyants were found guilty of working with ENEMO and subjected to additional restrictions after the jail sentence, according to Judge Evgeniya Nikolaeva of Moscow’s Basmanny District Court. The judge also forbade Melkonyants from engaging in any “public action” for nine years following his release, according to separate exiled media outlet Mediazona. The situation is a part of a wider campaign against political reviewers that the Kremlin has grown to dislike since the Ukrainian war of 2022. Both Melkonyants and Golos have disputed the accusations as being socially motivated. Golos has long been a target for government because it has been accused of election breaches in Russia since it was founded in 2000. It was referred to as a “foreign broker” in 2013 and was disbanded by the Justice Ministry in 2016. Its classification brought on increased attention and stigma. The organization has continued to operate irrationally as an and was added to a list of unregulated “foreign agents” in 2021, according to prosecutors, arguing that its prior affiliation with ENEMO, an NGO, before its bankruptcy, gave rise to Melkonyants’s trial. Russian officials have increased their efforts to silence independent voices in recent years. Several media outlets and human rights organizations have been shut down, labeled “foreign agents,” or outlawed as “undesirable,” and hundreds of protesters, reporters, and opposition numbers are facing criminal charges. The sentence of Melkonyants has drawn harsh criticism from international observers, who view it as more proof of Russia’s demise of political norms and civic liberties.
