Russia’s Supreme Court upholds prison sentence following an appeal

Skobow joined the proceedings via video link for the pronouncement of the verdict

Frankfurt am Main, 2 April 2026 – On 1 April, the Russian Supreme Court upheld the 16-year prison sentence handed down to 68-year-old dissident Alexander Skobov on charges of “justifying terrorism”. His lawyer had previously lodged an appeal. In what appears to have been an act of desperation, the political prisoner told the court that NATO should go to war against Russia and described Putin as the new Hitler. According to the International Society for Human Rights (IGFM), it is unlikely that he will leave the Russian prison system alive.

Accused of describing the war against Ukraine as fascist on his Telegram channel, referring to the Crimean Bridge as a legitimate target for Ukrainian military action, and calling for the end of the Putin regime, he was designated a “foreign agent” by the Russian Ministry of Justice in 2024 and arrested in St Petersburg on 2 April 2024. He was subsequently sentenced in camera by the Moscow Military Court on 21 March 2025 to 16 years’ imprisonment and a fine.

Despite his health problems, he always refused to leave Russia. He repeatedly stated that his voice carried more weight within the country. Skobov, who had already criticised the Communist Party’s policies in leaflets whilst a member of the Free Trade Union Movement in the USSR (SMOT) during the Soviet era, and who was subsequently confined for political reasons to the Nikolskoye psychiatric hospital in the Leningrad region in the 1980s, campaigned for political freedoms and social justice following the collapse of the USSR.

During the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras, he worked as a history teacher and, in 1997, published a textbook on the political history of Russia for upper secondary school pupils. Since Putin came to power, he has written newspaper articles criticising the resurgence of systematic repression in Russia, the dismantling of the rule of law, and the disregard for human rights.