The movement of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin's opponent, declared “terrorist” by the Supreme Court of Russia
Russia's Supreme Court on Monday qualified exiled oppositionist Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Anti-War Committee in Russia (CAR) as an organization “terrorist”banning his activities in the Russian Federation amid the Kremlin's crackdown on dissident voices, according to France Presse.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin's opponent. PHOTO: EPA EFE
The Supreme Court stated in a statement that a “recognized CAR as a terrorist organization and banned its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation”, reports the French agency, quoted by Agerpres.
Opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky's anti-war committee was created abroad in response to Moscow's announcement of a full-scale Russian offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Prior to this verdict, the organization had denounced “political reprisals aimed at intimidating Russian society, silencing independent voices and hiding the truth about the war”.
This committee includes, among others, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, political opponent Andrei Pivovarov, who ran in the 2021 legislative elections from his prison cell, and former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Sentenced to ten years in prison for refusing to obey the Kremlin
Mikhail Khodorkovsky – once the richest man in Russia – was sentenced in 2003 to ten years in prison for refusing to obey the Kremlin. He served a ten-year prison sentence on fraud charges, which he and many Western capitals saw as politically motivated. Since 2013, he settled in London and founded several opposition movements against Vladimir Putin from exile.
The Russian administration has methodically eradicated all protest movements in recent years in a campaign of reprisals that intensified with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Former Prime Minister Mihail Kasianov, who became an opponent of the power in exile, was designated as the right “foreign agent” by the Russian judiciary in 2023 for his activities within this Anti-War Committee.
