Grigory Melkonyants was sentenced to 5 years in prison for working with an organization considered “unwanted”
The group’s co -president, Grigory Melkonyants, 44, was sentenced on Wednesday (14.MAI.2025), 5 years in prison in a penal colony. The group is the only independent body of electoral inspection in Russia. He is considered guilty of working with an organization “unwanted”According to the Russian government. He had been in custody since August 2023.
The Melkonyants agency entered the Kremlin sights for the first time during the 2011 parliamentary elections. At the time, the goals was responsible for disclosing evidence of what it had considered to be fraud in the vote. A year later, this time in the presidential elections, the agency claimed irregularities in the election that elected Vladimir Putin for the 3rd time.
Declarations against Melkonyants are based on their connection with Enemo (European Network of Electoral Monitoring Organizations), based in Montenegro and connects inspection institutions to former communists, Asia and Europe.
Human rights organizations evaluate that the process against Melkonyats is part of a wide offensive against civil society, which has been accentuated since the beginning of the Russian invasion in Ukraine in February 2022.
