Sonya, the girlfriend of Sasha Skochilenko, came to today’s hearing in the trial of anti-war activist Olga Borisovna Smirnova. Sonya wore a sweatshirt embossed with the word “SOLIDARITY.” It was quite nice to see that there is reciprocity among the support groups of political prisoners.
Sergei Troshin told people about the evening gatherings to write letters to political prisoners that are held at the Yabloko Party’s Petersburg offices.
There were twenty [members of the public] in total, all the seats were taken. The trial was again held in the jury room on the ground floor, into which the guards can bring the accused from the courtyard and thus avoid walking them down the corridor amid shouts of support.
The hearing itself left more questions than answers. The judge has obviously begun to hurry in order to finish the trial as quickly as possible. Does she want to wrap things up before her holiday? The hearing itself thus ended around seven in the evening, despite the lawyer’s request to postpone it. The judge behaved nervously, on the verge of rudeness.
The bulk of the hearing was devoted to cross-examining Lebedev, an officer of Center “E” [the “anti-extremism” police]. He came dressed in camouflage, combat boots, a beret, and dark glasses, and he had a beard (which looked fake).
It was [Lebedev] who located and documented the pieces of evidence on which the accusation is based, and also determined them to be “fakes” by comparing them with the websites of the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry and, for some reason, Maria Zakharova’s Telegram channel, “as that of an official authoritative statesman expressing the position of the Foreign Ministry.” He searched for information by dates: if there was something in a post by Olga that was not found on the websites of the relevant authorities, he deemed it a “fake.” He also prepared a search memo stating that there were no special perpetrators [sic] in [Smirnova’s] apartment, and was present during the search.
The cross-examination lasted three hours. It was clear that [Lebedev] considers Olga a “blatant criminal” who disseminates such things “while our boys are getting killed.”
When asked about information from the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry about Babi Yar, Lebedev replied, “Fortunately, our country has its own independent policy and does not consider it necessary to take into account and react to statements made by the Jewish Foreign Ministry at the slightest pretext.”
He also believes that the information given by Russian officials and state bodies cannot be questioned and is the absolute truth.
To Olga’s question about why he had chosen precisely these entries from her social media page, he replied, “It would be impossible to document everything from the time of Jesus Christ’s birth.”
When asked why the witnesses who inspected the web pages containing the [offending] posts were recruited so far from his place of work, he replied that it is not so easy to find people who agree to serve as witnesses.
“I am sure that these people sitting behind me would have never agreed to come and document Smirnova’s criminal actions as witnesses,” he said.
After the recess, a disk with telephone connections that suddenly appeared in the case file was examined.
Olga has been holding up well: she smiled a lot and thanked people for their support. The next hearing is scheduled for Monday, August 7, at twelve noon. It was announced that oral arguments would be heard then, although, in my opinion, the defense has not yet finished examining the evidence.
Despite the fact that people in the support group joked a lot, the overall feeling from the trial is quite depressing. It feels as if the judge has already made up her mind, and we are present at a poorly staged theatrical performance. It’s just that the finale is up to ten years in prison…
Source: Alexei Sergeyev (Facebook), 31 July 2023. All photos, above, by Mr. Sergeyev. Translated by the Russian Reader. You can send letters— written in Russian or translated into Russian (if you don’t know a competent translator, you can use an online machine translator such as Google Translate)—to Olga Smirnova and other Russian political prisoners via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. You may ask me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending such letters.
