A Russian court has sentenced 62-year-old Oleh Prykhodko to five years’ harsh regime imprisonment, with the first year to be served in a prison, the worst of all Russian penal institutions. The sentence was significantly lower than that demanded by the prosecutor, but then the judges can have been in no doubt that they were sentencing an innocent man to a term of imprisonment that he may not survive. The defense had demonstrated over and over again that the charges against the 62-year-old who had never concealed his opposition to Russia’s occupation of Crimea had been brazenly fabricated.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
Halya Coynash: 5 years in prison for insisting that Crimea is Ukraine
Crimean pro-Ukrainian activist Oleh Prykhodko outside his home in Orekhovo, near Saki. He was arrested on Oct. 9 evening on ‘terrorist’ charges.
