Russia is persecuting dissenters by taking away their children

The sentence handed down to Alexei Moskalyov on March 28th was outrageous: two years in a prison colony for posting a few anti-war comments on , which were investigated only after his daughter, Masha, made a pro-Ukrainian drawing in class. But prosecutors had signalled this was the sentence they required, and in Russia’s judicial system they were not going to be disappointed. The surprise was that the defendant was not actually in the room when the sentence was read out. After the verdict, the court press officer loudly explained why: he had fled house arrest overnight.The prosecution and conviction herald a new type of : separating families as a punishment for anti-war activism. Outside the courtroom, Mr Moskalyov’s lawyer, Vladimir Biliyenko, expressed shock. “Never have I seen a verdict delivered without a defendant,” he said. “All I can say is I hope he is safe. Where is a secondary concern to me.” A day later, Mr Moskalyov was detained in a safehouse in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. He had apparently been in the process of being smuggled to the West.