Correction: “Verdict later this summer”

15 June 202016 June 2020 / editors (JC)

The hope that Yury DMITRIEV, as in April 2018, might again be acquitted at the Tuesday, 16 June hearing prompted me to post a longish survey (over 1,000 words), summarising all the issues surrounding this complex affair: the charges, the fate of Sergei Koltyrin, the “new hypothesis” about Sandarmokh, and so on. There are numerous useful links in the survey to the many posts and pages that have accumulated on this site over the past three years. it’s worth a read.

I ended my piece with the assertion that the Dmitriev Affair would prove as important, in its own way, as the Dreyfus Affair at the turn of the 20th century — for Russia and for the wider world.

And, if you have not already done so, don’t forget to SIGN THE PETITION!

John Crowfoot

On the Eve: A Survey

15 June 202015 December 2020 / editors (JC)

On 16 June 2020, Petrozavodsk City Court in Karelia (Northwest Russia) will announce a verdict in Yury Dmitriev’s second trial, which began two years ago. If convicted, the 64-year-old historian and researcher into Stalin-era crimes could face up to 15 years in one of Russia’s crowded and unhealthy penal colonies.

If acquitted, Dmitriev will be freed from custody in a prison system affected, like the rest of the country, by a constant spreading of Covid-19.

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