A Soviet-era dissident has been sentenced to 16 years in prison in Russia for his anti-war views, in a case that observers say highlights how the country’s repression now exceeds even parts of the Soviet period.
Alexander Skobov, a 67-year-old lifelong dissident, was sentenced on Friday by a military court in St Petersburg over a social media post supporting Ukraine’s 2022 strike on the Crimea Bridge, as well as his alleged involvement with the foreign-based opposition group the Free Russia Forum.
A self-described leftwing pacifist, Skobov published the dissident Soviet journal Perspektivy in what was then Leningrad, and spoke out against the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and later Russia’s the wars in Chechnya, and, more recently, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2014.
In the Soviet Union, Skobov was repeatedly charged with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and was twice forcibly confined to psychiatric institutions. He spent a total of six years in Soviet psychiatric wards that functioned as prisons.
His sentence on Friday effectively amounts to life imprisonment, given his age and frail health. Skobov’s lawyer said her client had diabetes, hepatitis C, bronchial asthma and glaucoma.
In a defiant final statement before sentencing, Skobov condemned the war in Ukraine, saying: “Today I will be asked whether I plead guilty. Well, I am the one making the accusation here! I accuse the stinking corpse of a regime and the ruling Putin clique of preparing, unleashing, and waging an aggressive war, of committing war crimes in Ukraine, of political terror in Russia, and of the moral corruption of my people.”
“I ask the regime’s henchmen present here: do you admit your guilt in being complicit in Putin’s crimes?” Skobov added.
As the judge read out the sentence, Skobov – seated inside a locked metal cage and guarded by security officers – was heard shouting: “Glory to Ukraine.”
Skobov has been in detention since his arrest in April 2024. Even behind bars, he has remained politically active. Last June, he published an open letter addressed to younger Russian political prisoners. “I want the young people who took the hit to know: the last Soviet dissidents stood alongside them,” he wrote in the letter, which was published by the Novaya Gazeta outlet
The sentence Skobov was given on Friday was extreme even by the already-repressive standards of today’s Russia. Observers said it highlighted how modern Russia had surpassed the scale of repression seen during the post-Stalin Soviet era.
“The draconian sentence handed down to Alexander Skobov today is emblematic of the war against dissent wielded by Russian authorities insure the country, in parallel to their abuse war in Ukraine,” said Tanya Lokshina, an associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division.
“It is particularly poignant that Skobov had spent years in a Soviet prison for having exercised his freedom of opinion all those years back – and over four decades later the history is repeating itself,” she added.
Russia has launched an unprecedented crackdown on dissent since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a campaign that has reached into nearly every corner of society.
The independent Russian outlet Proekt estimated in 2024 that the scale of repression under the Putin regime had surpassed that of the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, persecuting at least 116,000 people over the past six years alone.
The Skobov case also suggests that Moscow has no intention of easing repression at home against those who oppose the war – even as the Kremlin claims to be pursuing peace talks over the conflict in Ukraine.
In recent weeks, Russian authorities have detained a string of citizens who have criticised the war, ranging from a film critic to a pensioner and several regional journalists. Each is facing long spells in prison for social media posts condemning Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
