The Memorial Human Rights Center recognized one of its founders, 70-year-old Oleg Orlov, as a political prisoner. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on charges of “re-discrediting” the army. The human rights activist was tried for an anti-war article in which he called the Putin regime fascist.

Since the beginning of the SVO, Oleg Orlov has been fined several times for anti-war pickets. In November 2023, he was fined 150 thousand rubles for publishing “They wanted fascism, they got it.” However, the prosecutor's office toughened the charge by adding aggravating circumstances. Orlov was allegedly motivated by hatred towards the social group “military personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” and “ideological hostility against traditional spiritual, moral and patriotic values.” Orlov refused to participate in the unfair trial and instead read Franz Kafka's The Trial.

“The article on repeated “discredit” was created to suppress dissent after the start of the war. This article should be repealed, all cases related to it should be closed. Oleg Orlov was sent to jail for his work. As a human rights activist, he defends human rights and freedoms, calling a spade a spade. The process once again revealed the essence of the regime: it increasingly resembles fascist totalitarianism, which wages a war of conquest against neighbors and cracks down on dissidents within the country,” noted the Memorial Human Rights Center, which was previously recognized as a “foreign agent.”