Skochilenko, wearing one of her trademark bright hippie shirts with a red heart emblazoned on the front, fixed her eyes on Judge Oksana Demyasheva and told her: “Everyone sees and knows that you are not judging a terrorist. You are not judging an extremist. You are not even judging a political activist. You are judging a pacifist.”
The judge prohibited video coverage of Skochilenko’s final statement before pronouncing a guilty verdict on the charge of spreading “fake news” about the military.
Spectators shouted, “Shame!” after Demyasheva handed down the seven-year sentence, according to Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet.
The verdict comes amid a raft of unusually harsh punishments being meted out for even the mildest dissent against Russia’s war in Ukraine. As Skochilenko was taken away by police, supporters chanted a diminutive of her name: “Sasha! Sasha!”
In her final address to the court, Skochilenko denounced the war, saying it had brought nothing but sorrow, death and pain, for no reason that she could comprehend, according to independent Russian media outlets, some of which published her full statement.
“Why wage war when we are all that we have in this world, full of calamities, catastrophes and hardships? Can all the wealth and power in the universe redeem your loved one from the clutches of death?”
One police investigator, she claimed, resigned rather than continue working on her case, a statement that could not be independently verified.
“He confided to my lawyer, ‘I didn’t come to work for the Investigative Committee to pursue cases like Sasha Skochilenko’s,’” she continued, saying that the investigator had followed his conscience, just as she did.
“My case is so bizarre and ludicrous that even employees at Pretrial Detention Center Number 5 are astonished, exclaiming, ‘Do they really put people in prison for this now?’” said Skochilenko, 33, who has been incarcerated since spring of last year.
Most of the Russians who have been sentenced to harsh jail terms are prominent opposition figures and fierce critics of President Vladimir Putin such as Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza and their associates. But before the war, Skochilenko was not a political activist and spent most of her time organizing jam sessions and drawing quaint cartoons.
In comments to The Washington Post last year conveyed by her lawyer, Skochilenko said her time in prison had become a kind of involuntary antiwar protest, calling it her “largest work.”
“My detention and the cruelty to me has made my act public and given it such magnitude,” she said. “I’m not an activist. I am an artist, a performer.”
Upset by the Ukrainian deaths caused by Russian’s invasion, she was inspired on a whim by an online antiwar campaign by activists across Russia to place the stickers with war statistics and other antiwar information on top of supermarket price tags.
One sticker read, “The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol where about 400 people were hiding from shelling.” Another said: “Weekly inflation reached a new high not seen since 1998 because of our military actions in Ukraine. Stop the war.”
Skochilenko was caught because a pensioner, Galina Baranova, 76, saw the stickers while shopping and reported the incident to the police. The artist, who had a guitar sticking out of her backpack and had been on her way to visit a friend, was easy to track on CCTV cameras.
“The state prosecutor repeatedly declared my actions extremely dangerous to society and the state. How fragile must the prosecutor’s belief in our state and society be, if he thinks that our statehood and public safety can be brought down by five small pieces of paper,” Skochilenko declared on Thursday.
“No one was hurt by my actions, yet I’ve been incarcerated for over a year and a half now, alongside murderers, thieves, statutory rapists and pimps. Can the supposed harm I caused even compare to these crimes?”
Throughout her ordeal, Skochilenko has faced astonishing cruelty. Prison authorities denied her gluten-free food that she needs as a sufferer of celiac disease. She was also denied medication for a heart condition at one point. She also has bipolar disorder and was diagnosed with an ovarian cyst while in prison.
Authorities placed her in a cell with bullies who forced her to stand all day, denied her access to the toilet for hours on end and made sure she missed meals, her partner, Sonya Subbotina, told The Post in an interview last year. They also tormented her by forcing her to sweep the cell repeatedly and to wash her clothing over and over.
Skochilenko made a point of trying to appeal to the judge’s conscience on Thursday, warning that Demyasheva would be remembered for her verdict. But Demysheva’s sentence was just a year short of the eight years demanded by prosecutor Alexander Gladyshev.
Days earlier, Demyasheva suspended the hearing because spectators loudly applauded the impassioned defense offered by Skochilenko’s lawyer, Yana Nepovinnova.
“You must not punish dissent. You must not punish for objective criticism of the government and its decisions,” Nepovinnova said, calling the trial an examination that the judge could pass or fail.
Skochilenko said Thursday that as a pacifist she could not bear to kill even a spider, and was “frightened at the very thought of taking a life.”
“Yes, I think that life is sacred. Oh yes, life! Strip away the world’s frippery like money, power, glory and social status, and all that’s left is life. Oh yes, life! It’s persistent, tenacious, moving, incredible, powerful.”
She said that she doubted that the prosecutor, deep in his heart, really wanted to see her jailed for such a long time, speculating that he was probably thinking only of his career.
“Despite being behind bars, I am freer than you,” she said, explaining that at least she was not afraid to state her opinions.
“I’m not scared of not making a brilliant career, appearing ridiculous, vulnerable, or strange. I’m not afraid of being different from others,” she said. “Perhaps that’s why my state is so afraid of me and others like me and keeps me caged like a dangerous animal.”