Press Release, 16.10.2024

Photo: Dmitry Skurikhin by his store / Photo from social media

An action of writing letters to Russian political prisoners will be held in Novgorod Yabloko on 25 October with the participation of Dmitry Skurikhin, an entrepreneur from the Leningrad Region who served an imprisonment term of 1.5 years for “discrediting the army.” Yabloko invites all to take part.

Dmitry Skurikhin, a father of many children, was involved in civil activism and was a deputy of a village council. The first criminal case was filed against Dmitry Skurikhin under Article 280.3 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (”discrediting of the armed forces”) due to a poster against mobilisation on the facade of a store owned by Skurikhin. Earlier, the Leninsky District Court of St. Petersburg fined Dmitry Skurikhin 45,000 rubles under the administrative article on discrediting the Russian army.

The reason for initiating the second criminal case against Dmitry Skurikhin was his single picket: he was standing on his knees with a poster reading “Forgive Me, Ukraine!”

Also Dmitry Skurikhin painted the inscription “Peace to Ukraine. Freedom to Russia” on his store back in 2014.

When Skurikhin was in prison, Yabloko members wrote him letters at the actions of support for political prisoners. This is how the political prisoner began corresponding with the Novgorod Yabloko team.

“You have a wonderful city! I have recently read the drama “Posadnik” by Alexei K. Tolstoy – a magnificent thing! In general, it sometimes seems to me that today an average Russian, in terms of his development (social), in terms of his understanding of the correct relations between society and the authorities, lags behind the Novgorodians of the 13th century by about a hundred years. It’s time to catch up on this unfortunate lag,” Dmitry Skurikhin wrote to the Yabloko members.

The Novgorod Yabloko team invited a political prisoner to visit, and Dmitry Skurikhin, having been released, accepted the invitation.

Yabloko will hold a traditional action of writing letters to political prisoners in Novgorod on 25 October from 17:00 to 19:30. Dmitry Skurikhin will be the guest of the evening. We invite all to come.