Although Dukhanina and her fellow dangerous criminals were found guilty on Friday, the court has “cleverly” delayed the sentencing hearing until this coming Monday, that is, until after the closing ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, President Putin’s lavishly expensive celebration of his allegedly triumphant reign. It is entirely likely that on Monday Dukhanina and her co-defendants will be sentenced to five or six years in prison. This is the punishment that prosecutors have asked the court to impose on them.
Dukhanina’s real “crime” is that she dared to challenge — peaceably and legally — President Putin’s triumphant “re-election” the day before his inauguration. She did this along with tens of thousands of other people, but she and her co-defendants were seemingly randomly picked out from this great mass of folks and arrested, held interminably in pretrial detention (or, in Dukhanina’s case, under house arrest), and over the past few months, subjected to a senseless show trial. The authorities, apparently, wanted to make examples of them, to show the greater public that this is what happens to “ordinary” people when they oppose supreme political power and get mixed up in the “dirty” business of politics.
As anyone who has been following the Bolotnaya Square case can tell you, however, Dukhanina and her co-defendants are anything but ordinary people. They’ve consistently shown themselves to be courageous, intelligent, funny, and indomitable folks, extraordinary models of solidarity, and an inspiration to their fellow citizens and other “ordinary” people everywhere. More than anything, Dukhanina and her comrades show us what Russia could look like, what it will look like, when the Putinist tyranny has ended.
But don’t believe us. Read the closing statement Dukhanina made to the court earlier this month.
