Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev missed the informal CIS summit in St. Petersburg due to a busy work schedule. Aliyev's administration also noted that his absence from the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on December 21 was due to Azerbaijan not being a member of the organization.
The Golovinsky District Court of Moscow found Oleg Orlov, co-chairman of the Memorial human rights project, guilty of “repeated discrediting” of the army under Part 1 of Art. 280.3 CC. He was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in a general regime colony.
Since the beginning of the SVO, Oleg Orlov has received fines 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 then strengthened 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 himself said in court that the reason for the pacifist publication was not ideological hatred, but a protest against the military operation in Ukraine and dissatisfaction with political repression.
Memorial was recognized as a foreign agent and liquidated. Oleg Orlov is also included in the list of foreign agents.