Grigory Melkonyants sentenced to five years in colony
The Basmanny District Court of Moscow has sentenced Grigory Melkonyants to five years in a general regime penal colony.
A female judge of the above court has sentenced Grigory Melkonyants to five years in a general regime penal colony, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent has reported from the courtroom.
He is also prohibited from engaging in public activities for nine years after serving his sentence.
The sitting of the Basmanny Court, scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Moscow time, began only one hour and 10 minutes later, according to the online broadcast of the "Mediazona"* outlet.
"The time spent by Grigory Melkonyants at the SIZO (pre-trial prison) was accounted according to the formula of a day at the SIZO as 1.5 days in colony," the outlet has explained. "Since Melkonyants has been held at the SIZO since August 2023, it means that he has already "served" a little more than 2.5 years out of his five-year term."
In his final statement, Melkonyants called his time spent at the SIZO as "an exciting period" of his life. "Here, in custody, I’ve met many people whom I would probably never have met in ordinary life – the people with different life experiences, various education levels, and convicted under a variety of articles. And every day we have to agree on how to live together: how to organize duty in the cell, whether to ventilate it or not, where to get a refrigerator or a kettle. In fact, we constantly hold small referendums and reach consents," he said. The "Caucasian Knot" has posted the full text of Grigory Melkonyants’ last plea, recorded by our correspondent in the courtroom on May 12, 2025.
This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 14, 2025 at 12:17 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.
*On September 29, 2021, the Ministry of Justice of Russia included the LLC "ZP" (the legal entity that had established the "Mediazona") into the list of media outlets-foreign agents.