THE latest episode in Russia’s long history of judicial travesties played out this week in a stuffy courtroom in Rostov-on-Don, a provincial city near the Ukrainian border. As two defendants sat in a cage behind their lawyers, a prosecutor in dark glasses described them as bloodthirsty Ukrainian radicals who ran a terrorist cell in Crimea in early 2014. They had allegedly plotted to blow up a statue of Lenin.
The lead defendant is Oleg Sentsov (pictured), a Ukrainian film director, and the supposed terrorist plot is every bit as fictional as his screenplays. Mr Sentsov’s real offence was to oppose Russia’s …read more
Source: The Economist
