On Wednesday, Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia’s only independent election monitoring organization Golos, was sentenced to five years in a penal colony by a Moscow court.
The verdict found him guilty of participating in the activities of an “undesirable” organisation, a charge stemming from Golos’s past affiliation with the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), which Russian authorities blacklisted in 2021.
Judge Evgeniya Nikolaeva of Moscow’s Basmanny District Court also barred Melkonyants from engaging in public activities for nine years following his release. Prosecutors had sought a six-year term, accusing Golos of acting as a “structural division” of ENEMO, allegations both Melkonyants and ENEMO have denied.
Melkonyants, 44, was arrested in August 2023 amid a wider crackdown on civil society following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Throughout his trial, he maintained his innocence and dismissed the charges as politically motivated.
After the verdict, he addressed supporters from the courtroom, urging them not to lose hope.
“Don’t worry, I’m not discouraged. You shouldn’t be either,” he said.
Founded in 2000, Golos has been a prominent force in exposing electoral fraud in Russia, notably during the 2011 parliamentary and 2012 presidential elections.
The organization has faced increasing pressure from the Kremlin, including being designated a “foreign agent” in 2013 and dissolved as an NGO in 2016.
Despite these obstacles, Golos continued its election monitoring work without official registration.
Human rights groups condemned the sentencing as part of a broader campaign to silence dissent and suppress independent civil society voices in Russia.
Amnesty International called the conviction “a brazen and politically motivated clampdown on peaceful activism,” emphasizing that Melkonyants’s only “offence” was defending the right to free and fair elections.
The court ruled that Melkonyants’s pre-trial detention would count toward his sentence. His lawyer, Mikhail Biryukov, confirmed plans to appeal the decision.
