For a week now, 64-year-old anti-war activist Igor Baryshnikov has been in custody in Russia's far western exclave of Kaliningrad after being sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison on charges of spreading “false” information about the Russian military in Ukraine.
Baryshnikov, who was diagnosed with suspected prostate cancer, is now trying to secure urgently needed medical treatment after a court refused to release him -- a move his lawyer calls a death sentence for both the activist and his ailing mother.
“With one verdict, the court is killing two people -- Igor and his mother,” Baryshnikov’s lawyer, Maria Bontsler, told the North.Realities Desk of RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
A court in the city of Sovetsk, near the Lithuanian border in the exclave, convicted Baryshnikov on June 22 of spreading "deliberately false information" about the Russian military in Facebook posts about Russia’s decimation of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol and atrocities by Russian forces in Ukraine.
It was the first conviction registered in the western exclave under the statute, one of several that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law shortly after he launched the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“I am charged with committing a serious crime. And yet, I did not kill anyone, did not rob anyone, did not rape, did not steal anything from anyone,” Baryshnikov said in his final statement to the court, comparing his trial to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s show trials in 1937.
“I consider this a political reprisal. The case was fabricated and falsified like in 1937, when a person was imprisoned for ten years or shot on fantastical charges,” Baryshnikov said.
The judge in the trial at the Sovetsky District Court refused to allow Baryshnikov’s release from custody for medical treatment despite testimony from his doctors that a tumor on his prostate and a catheter that he uses are grounds for medical release.
“The judge said, ‘You don't have enough medical records,’” Bontsler told North.Realities.
Bontsler said Baryshnikov’s legal team plans to petition the UN Human Rights Committee to secure the medical assistance her client requires. She said a doctor’s examination of the activist found 12 tumor markers.
“For the doctor, there is no doubt that Igor has cancer. But the court has doubts,” Bontsler said. “When the state cracks down on a sick person like that, it's just low. This is unworthy of the state. But we will fight.”
'Putting His Mother To Death'
Baryshnikov, a well-known opposition activist in Sovetsk, has also been a primary caregiver for his 97-year old mother Yevgenia, a Holocaust survivor who is suffering from dementia.
Igor Baryshnikov with his mother, Yevgenia
Up until recent years, Baryshnikov’s mother still recognized her son and relatives, and even read the news on the Internet. But her condition worsened following Baryshnikov’s arrest in 2021 for participating in rallies in support of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
A nurse who had helped care for Yevgenia quit after authorities questioned her in connection with Baryshnikov’s opposition activities, Bontsler said. His wife, Lyudmila, is now taking care of his mother, whose fate the court wanted to leave in the hands of social services.
“I was categorically outraged by the decision to transfer Igor's mother to our social services,” Baryshnikov’s friend and fellow activist, Vadim Khairullin, told North.Realities. “I know very well how our homes for the elderly work. It's just putting his mother to death. And his mother is an interesting person who suffered from the actions of the Nazis.”
Khairullin himself was sentenced to one year in prison last year under a law criminalizing participation in more than one unsanctioned protest within a 180-day period. He was released on June 22, the same day as Baryshnikov’s guilty verdict and went straight to Sovetsk for the announcement of the ruling.
“I considered it necessary to be there - after all, I may never see this person again,” Khairullin said. “I am outraged by the fact that people in such a [physical] condition receive real prison sentences for such things. They wrote something on the Internet. They could have come up with something like house arrest or a ban on using the Internet.”
'They Let Him Off Easy'
Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Baryshnikov to eight years in prison. The regional court in Kaliningrad said in a statement that the 7 1/2-year sentence it handed to the activist -- and which has yet to come into force -- accounted for factors including his health.
Vadim Khairullin (left) with Igor Baryshnikov
According to one friend who attended the verdict, a crew from Russian state television showed up to the court session.
“I asked one of them if he knew what Igor was being tried for. And he told me: ‘I know, of course. He is a traitor to the motherland. He must be judged. He fought in Ukraine, abandoned his positions and fled,’” Natalya Kholmanova, a supporter of Baryshnikov who attended the verdict, told North.Realities.
“So they do not even know what he is accused of,” she added.
Kholmanova said that the courtroom was silent as the verdict was read, but as Baryshnikov was being handcuffed, someone shouted: “They let him off easy.”
If the appeal of Baryshnikov’s verdict is denied, the activist will serve his sentence in a Kaliningrad-region prison that includes a hospital.
For now, his lawyers say the detention facility where he is currently being held is providing disinfection procedures and a daily shower, and that the catheter in his stomach will be changed at a regional hospital. His legal team has already begun the process of trying to get him released on medical grounds.
“We provided all the documents. The head of the medical unit [of the detention facility] studied them and immediately saw that Igor had cancer…. He immediately warned that he would have to be taken to the regional hospital for a diagnosis, and that he was already being booked for an appointment,” another lawyer for Baryshnikov, Yekaterina Selizarova, told North.Realities.
A special medical commission will make the decision on his release for a medical examination and treatment, Selizarova said.
She added that, if they are not able to secure his release before his prison sentence formally begins, they will try again after it comes into force.