Human Rights in Russia week-ending 14 January 2022 - with Konstanntin Kotov
This week our guest on the podcast is Konstantin Aleksandrovich Kotov, a Russian computer programmer and civil society activist. In 2019 Konstantin Kotov was the second person to be convicted under the so-called ‘Dadin’ Article 212.1 that was added to the Russian Criminal Code in July 2014 – ‘Repeated violation of the established procedure for organizing or holding a meeting, rally, demonstration, march, or picket.’ The topics of our conversation include: the Russian judicial and penitentiary systems, and the current state of human rights in Russia. The questions we are discuss are: Why did you become a civic activist? How unexpected was your arrest, prosecution and imprisonment in 2019? How did you feel at the time? Your arrest and sentence caused a great public outcry. What did this support mean to you? You and the defendant in the New Greatness case, Anna Pavlikova, were married in the building of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre where you were held. How did this happen? On 20 April 2020, Moscow City Court reduced your sentence from four years in prison to one year and six months. Through all this time how did you see the work of the Russian legal system, including the President’s intervention? What has been your experience of the Russian penitentiary system? How do you assess the current situation in Russia in terms of human rights? What needs to be done to improve the human rights situation in the country? What is the role of civil society and civic activists? What are the prospects for the development of human rights protection in Russia? This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Anchor and YouTube. You can listen to the podcast in full here: This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor. Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: