Alexei Gaskarov. 3 years and 6 months in a general-regime penal colony.
Ilya Gushchin. 2 years and 6 months in a general-regime penal colony.
Alexander Margolin. 3 years and 6 months in a general-regime penal colony.
Elena Kokhtareva. 3 years and 3 months suspended.
What is striking now, of course, is not the judicial lawlessness itself (we've already gotten used to that), but the utterly senseless cruelty.
The country is different now; everything is different. Planes are crashing, thousands are dying, and a war is being waged against a country that was never called anything but “brotherly.” People are being openly recruited to take part in combat. An actual fight with a police officer, for non-political defendants, almost always ends with a fine or a few days of administrative detention.
And the power of the Kremlin ghouls keeps devouring the lives of those who peacefully took to the streets demanding freedom and justice, handing down sentences citing things like “threw empty plastic bottles at police officers.”
One small detail that is, however, large enough to characterize what is happening: the judge who sentenced the Bolotnaya defendants today is the very same judge who gave a suspended sentence to a Federation Council senator who beat and raped a student returning from her graduation ball.
God is no fool—He sees everything, and everyone will be held to account.
Freedom for political prisoners!