Russian Political Prisoner Alexander Skobov: Ukrainians Inscribe My Name On Their Shells

Courageous speech by tje prisoner of the Putin regime.

On March 18, in a debate, the prosecutor asked to appoint Alexander Skobov, a well-known Soviet dissident and Russian oppositionist, to serve 18 years in a strict regime colony on charges of justifying terrorism and participating in a terrorist community. This is reported by the Skobov support group.

On March 21, at 10:00 in the 1st Western District Military Court of St. Petersburg, Alexander Valeryevich will say the last word.

We publish the text of Alexander Skobov's speech in the debate:

"Those who follow the process, of course, noticed that the position of my lawyers and my position are not quite the same. We place accents in different ways, and we have slightly different tasks. My lawyers sought to draw attention to the problem, which is identified in the reports of international organizations as an abuse of anti-terrorist legislation to restrict freedom of expression, freedom of speech.

And this problem does exist, and in some quite decent countries, in particular European ones. The European approach to this problem differs from the American one. In the United States of America, the First Amendment of the Constitution is in force, expressly prohibiting any restrictions on freedom of speech. But European countries, after the most severe trauma of the Second World War, took a slightly different path. They introduced prohibitive measures to limit and spread the ideas of national hatred, national superiority, national inferiority — everything related to Nazism. Well, a whole system of restriction of freedom of speech has grown on this. Europe is looking for a reasonable balance between freedom of speech and its restriction.

I do not consider these searches successful. Freedom of speech either exists or does not exist. Any of its restrictions will always lead to abuse, no matter what good intentions. The very idea of forbidding, justifying anything or anyone is flawed in principle. It means to forbid thinking and feeling. Lawyers have an inalienable right to seek any justification for their client, but any person has the same right.

Only this whole story is not about us. There is no abuse of anti-terrorist legislation in Putin's Nazi Russia. There is legislation directly aimed at suppressing any expression of disagreement with the authorities. Under this legislation, a theatrical production about how terrible the fate of women whom ISIS militants dragged into their war as their wives is regarded as a justification for terrorism. Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk involved in the verdict have no soul, they are undead, but the legislation itself is structured in such a way that it can be interpreted in this way. Is it possible to speak in the language of law with the state that created this legislation and so uses it? Of course, not.

My case is fundamentally different from the case of Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk. As well as numerous cases against people who limited themselves to expressing moral condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine. My business is not about freedom of speech at all, its restrictions and abuse of these restrictions. My case is about the right of a citizen in a country waging an unjust, aggressive war of conquest to fully side with the victim of aggression. The right and duty of a citizen in a country waging such a war.

This right belongs to the category of natural, because it, in principle, cannot be regulated by legal norms. Any belligerent state considers the transition to the side of its armed enemy as treason. And the aggressor never recognizes himself as an aggressor and calls his robbery self-defense, self-defense. Is it possible to prove legally to the aggressor that he is an aggressor? Of course, not.

But Putin's Nazi dictatorship is an aggressor of a special kind. Legislatively declaring the war “non-war”, it considers any armed opposition to its aggression as terrorist. It does not recognize the existence of a legitimate legal armed adversary at all. Mandatory reports of the Russian command persistently call servicemen of the Ukrainian army militants. Does it have anything to do with law? Of course, not. But war, in principle, is incompatible with law. By its very nature, law is a restraint on violence, and war is violence without restraint. When guns speak, the law is silent.

My case is about my participation in the armed counteraction to Russian aggression, albeit only as a propagandist. The purpose of all my speeches was and is to achieve a radical expansion of military assistance to Ukraine, up to the direct participation of the armed forces of NATO countries in hostilities against the Russian army. For this purpose, I refused to emigrate and consciously went to prison. From here, my words sound louder and weigh more.

Expressed in the wording of the so-called Criminal Code of the so-called Russian Federation, all this is assistance to a foreign unfriendly state in creating threats to the national security of the Russian Federation. That is, what is described in the article on the state treason of the current Criminal Code. Why wasn't this article presented to me? However, like many other political articles of the current Criminal Code, which should have been presented to me for my publications. But my most important publications were never included in the indictment, nor were they included in the accusation. Although I had the opportunity to make sure that the investigation got acquainted with them. In addition, the investigation was aware that I transferred my personal money for lethal weapons to the Ukrainian army and publicly urged others to follow my example. For this, the treason is now stamped with a machine gun.

And yet, why wasn't this done? I think that the matter here is not only the overload of the repressive machine, human laziness, the hostile attitude towards legal norms in general, including its own legal norms, characteristic of the authorities of the Russian Federation. Well, these are our legal norms, what we want with them, we do, we want — we apply, we do not want — we do not apply, our own hand is the lord.

But there's another reason. Even among people who morally condemn Russian aggression and risk going to jail for it and going to jail for it, there are not many who dare to fully and directly side with the victim of aggression. The dictatorship is afraid that there will be more of them, afraid of examples. Therefore, she had her own interest not to give excessive amplification to my voice and not to emphasize the features of my case that I have just talked about. I tried to focus the attention of the public on these features.

But I did not really try to prove to the aggressor that he was an aggressor, trampling all internationally recognized norms of law, unlike my lawyers. This makes as much sense as a discussion about human rights with Hitler's regime or Stalin's regime similar to it. By the way, let the judge remember which article of the Criminal Code punishes for equating the Stalinist regime with Hitler's.

But what my lawyers and I agree on is that my case cannot be considered outside the context of the ongoing war, it is part of this war. And the attempts of my lawyers to speak in the language of law with the authorities of the aggressor only once again illustrate: when guns speak, the law is silent.

My business is not about freedom of speech. In this war, the word is also a weapon that also kills. Ukrainians write my name on shells destroying Putin's scum that invaded their land. Death to the Russian fascist invaders, death to Putin, the new Hitler, the murderer and the scoundrel! Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes! I'm done.

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