The Russian state in Spring 2023 brought charges against Mr. Kokhovets for spreading “fake news” (actually telling the truth) about the army.
He faces a maximum prison sentence for 10 years for this. The charges are based on a street interview of about one minute Mr. Kokhovets gave in July of 2022 in Moscow, published by Radio Liberty and it is shown in the video below. (more info – original russian – english machine translate).
Find the English transcript of Yuri’s words below.
Please consider that the opinions for which he is being prosecuted for are held by millions of people around the world – probably because he tells the truth? At any rate – this demonstrates how power can be abused against people, to silence all political opposition and to invite people to lie.
Please consider that the opinions for which he is being prosecuted for are held by millions of people around the world – probably because he tells the truth? At any rate – this demonstrates how power can be abused against people, to silence all political opposition and to invite people to lie.
Interview Transcript
Radio Liberty:
NATO considers Russia the most serious threat due to the invasion of Putin’s troops in Ukraine. We asked Muscovites whether a détente between Russia and NATO countries is needed?
Yuri Kokhovets answers:
We definitely need a detente. But it all depends on our government. It is our wreckless government: Putin and his gang.
Russia has created these problems all by itself. Twenty years now they have been saying that NATO constitutes a big problem. I do not see any problem in NATO at all. NATO does not plan to take over anybody. But for 20 years now our propaganda tells us that NATO comes closer and closer, that it wants to attack us … and some weird pre-texts are put forward.
I see all of this as part of the old bureaucracy from Soviet times.
Our government said that it wants to fight the nationalists, but it bombs commercial centers – In Bucha our soldiers from Buratia and Dagestan shoot civilian people, without any reason. And because of such acts people start to hate.
We need to stop all of this. One person can stop this in our country. As soon as he stops this, there will be detente in the relations with NATO and all other countries. We need to stop with these actions and everything will be fine. Everything is very simple. Our economy will rise after that, the stock market will immediately jump.
The specialist “experts” used by the prosecution are the same people, who served in the prosecution of the civil organization of MEMORIAL – see the article by Novaja Gazeta on these “experts” here.