Aleksei Gorinov's Final Statement

03 DEC 2024

SOTAvision

On 29 November, the Vladimir Garrison Military Court sentenced Aleksei Gorinov, a former Moscow municipal deputy, to a 3-year prison sentence in a high-security penal colony under charges of “justifying terrorism”. During the hearing, Aleksei gave his final statement —we are publishing his speech in full.

"For my entire life, I have been against aggression, violence and war, and have dedicated my life exclusively to peaceful endeavours: science, teaching, educating, management, civic activism as a deputy, a human rights defender, a member of election commissions, and an inspector of the election process. It never occurred to me that I would live to witness such a level of degradation of the political system of my country and its foreign policy, where simple people, counted by thousands, who advocate for peace and against war, would be charged with libel against the Armed Forces and justifying terrorism, and put on trial.

A third year of the war is coming to an end; a third year of casualties and destruction on European territory, deprivation and suffering of millions of people, unprecedented since the Second World War.

As late as at the end of April, our former Defence Minister announced Ukraine’s losses in the armed conflict: 500 thousand people. Let that number sink in! And what losses has Russia suffered then – Russia, which keeps successfully advancing along the entire front, according to official information? That we haven’t learned so far. And who will be held to account for that? All this for what?

Our government and those who support it in its militaristic endeavours have longed for this war so much – and look, the war has already come to our soil, too. I want to ask them: Has our life become better? How do you define the well-being and security of our country and its people? Or you didn’t expect such a turn of events in your calculations? But for now, not those who have masterminded the war, who continue to kill, warmonger and hire mercenaries are bearing the war’s consequences, but us, simple Russian people, who raise our voice against war and for peace. We bear the consequences and pay for the war with our freedom and sometimes even with our lives.

I belong to the elderly generation of people whose parents fought in the Second World War or lived through it with all its hardships. The generation that has already passed away urged us to maintain peace at all costs as the most precious thing that there is for all people on Earth. But we have neglected their calls and denigrated our memory of those people and the casualties of that war.

My guilt consists in the fact that I, as a citizen of my country, allowed this war to happen and was unable to stop it. And I request that this be reflected in the verdict.

But I would like my guilt and responsibility to be shared with the organisers, combatants and supporters of the war, as well as with those who persecute people advocating for peace.

I continue to live in hope that it will one day come to be true. But for now, I ask the Ukrainian people and my fellow citizens who have suffered from the war to forgive me.

In these proceedings in which I have been charged and put on trial for a voiced opinion about the need to seek an end to the war, I have fully expressed my attitude to this abhorrent pursuit of man. All I can say is that violence and aggression only beget violence in return and nothing else. This is the genuine reason for our woes, suffering, our meaningless victims, as well as the destruction of civil and industrial objects, of our homes.

Let’s put an end to this bloody, pointless carnage – pointless to us and to the Ukrainians as well. Isn’t it time to let our neighbours be and focus on our internal problems that keep growing like a snowball? We have a long time ago proven to the whole world that we are courageous, steadfast and peace-loving. So maybe enough is enough?

Leo Tolstoy – An excerpt from a letter to his son (1904):

«For me, the madness, the criminality of war are so clear that apart from this madness and criminality I can see nothing in it.»

I also agree and endorse these words of our great compatriot.

You should too!"

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