Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Paris to sign a security agreement with Emmanuel Macron

The new trial targeting dissident Oleg Orlov, a figure in the defense of human rights in Russia, opened on Friday in Moscow. Veteran of Memorial, the NGO co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize and dissolved by Russian justice, this 70-year-old man faces up to five years in prison for his repeated denunciations of the military offensive in Ukraine, launched there two years old by Vladimir Putin.

With rectangular glasses on his nose and dressed in a light blue shirt and a gray sweatshirt, Mr. Orlov told Agence France Presse (AFP) a few minutes before the opening of the debates that he “in a fighting spirit”. “I don’t expect anything good”he nevertheless admitted, accompanied by his lawyer.

Oleg Orlov is still, for a few days at least, an exceptional figure by being both free in Russia and openly critical.

At the end of a first trial, Oleg Orlov was found guilty in October 2023 of having “discredited” the army and sentenced to a small fine, a very lenient verdict in a Russia which has made a habit of imprisoning critics of the regime. To everyone’s surprise, the prosecution requested this fine, justifying it by the age of the opponent and his state of health. Then he changed his mind and appealed, deploring a sanction ultimately “excessively light” which did not correspond to the ” public danger “ what the accused would represent.

Russian justice then decided to send the case against Mr. Orlov back to investigators and launch a new trial against the dissident for the same accusations.

If most of Vladimir Putin’s critics have been incarcerated or driven into exile in recent years, against a backdrop of accelerating repression, Oleg Orlov explained this week to AFP that he was staying in Russia to ” continue the fight “. “I don’t want to end up in prison… But do I have a choice? »he asked.

However, he says he expects a guilty verdict before the presidential election in mid-March which should see Vladimir Putin triumph without opposition. “No one doubts that I will be condemned”he summarized to AFP in his apartment in the north of Moscow.

In fact, Oleg Orlov is accused of having demonstrated against the Russian assault in Ukraine and of having signed a vitriolic column against the Russian authorities published by the French media Mediapart. This text accuses Russian troops of the murder of ” mass “ of Ukrainian civilians and denounces the ” victory “ in Russia “darkest forces”those who “dreamed of total revenge” after the fall of the USSR in 1991.