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There are critical voices in Russia. People who, despite the harshest repression, resisted the authoritarian regime of ruler Vladimir Putin. There are only a few. And the louder and more prominent they are, the longer they usually spend behind bars. For example, Alexei Navalny (30 years in prison) or Vladimir Kara-Mursa (25 years in prison), who, according to trial observers, were convicted on trumped-up charges and are now languishing in the prison camp in the most difficult conditions.

Mikhail Krieger was threatened with the same thing. The 63-year-old activist was sentenced to seven years in prison by a court near Moscow in May for denigrating the Russian dictator on social media. Krieger appealed the verdict. According to human rights organization Memorial, this has now been rejected.

Last November, Krieger, who worked as a delivery boy for a restaurant, was arrested by Russian security forces while at work. The investigating authorities accused him of “terrorist activities” and “incitement to extremism”.

Resistance song sung in court

Shortly before the verdict in the appeal proceedings was announced, Krieger described the Russian president as “the number one terrorist in the world” and shouted the pro-Ukrainian rallying cry “Victory of Ukraine.”

His anti-Kremlin stance did not stem from the war in Ukraine. According to the Public Prosecution Service, Krieger had already insulted ruler Putin on Facebook in 2019 and 2020 and demanded that the head of state be “hanged”. He also called possible attacks on agents of the Russian domestic secret service FSB ‘heroic’.

During the Soviet era, Russian autocrat Putin was an agent of the KGB, the predecessor of the FSB. He still maintains excellent contacts with the secret services; many of his closest confidantes and much of Russia’s power elite belong to the sworn circle of former secret service agents.

Krieger attended the appeal proceedings via video link, which took place in a military settlement called Vlasikha, near the Russian capital. He is already serving his sentence in a Moscow prison.

During the trial, he refused to show remorse and distanced himself from his statements, as the prosecutor had demanded. Instead, he described himself as politically persecuted for siding with Ukraine. At the main hearing in May, he even sang a Ukrainian folk song considered a symbol of resistance to the Russian invasion.

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