The court decision in the case of a single father, Alexei Moskalev, sentenced to two years in prison for repeated “discrediting” of the army, caused an echo among officials in Russia and abroad. RTVI has collected statements from politicians and public figures on this high-profile case.
On March 28, the Tula region’s Efremovskiy District Court sentenced Aleksey Moskalev to two years in prison for “discrediting” the military over comments on social media. Before the announcement of the verdict, it was learned that the defendant had escaped from house arrest. Former Channel One editor Marina Ovsyannikova said the man was “in good hands”. Lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov published, at the request of Moskalev, a letter from his daughter, who is in an orphanage. In the letter, the girl calls her father her hero, asks him not to give up and writes that “everything you do is right”.
EU foreign service spokesman Peter Stano urged Russia “to abide by its Constitution and its international obligations, and not to punish children and parents for political reasons”.
“A two-year prison sentence against Alexei Moskalev for luring his daughter to peace and sending her to an orphanage is an absolutely shameful act,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
Russian President’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin is also interested in the reasons behind the Alexei Moskalev case. However, for further comment, he suggested contacting the regulators.
“There, indeed, in the story with a child, the thing is completely different. Indeed, very deplorable with the performance of parental duties and with the provision of sustenance for a child. I advise you to contact the authorities. They’ll tell you when this story started. It’s quite old,” Peskov said.
The Kremlin spokesman stressed that he could not go into details, “but everything is much more complicated there, everything is not so simple”.
In the resolution of the Juvenile Affairs Commission of the Tula region, which published telegram channel “Attention, news”, there were formal reasons to send the daughter of Alexei Moskalev to an orphanage. In particular, the daughter’s unsatisfactory grades in certain subjects at school, as well as the fact that the father would not be interested in his daughter’s school results, does not attend parents’ meetings, does not enter into contact with teachers and “negatively affects the spiritual life”. and the moral education of her daughter.
The resolution also states that the Moskalev family was pre-emptively registered in May 2022 due to the father’s “improper performance of parental duties”. The man’s wife has not lived with her daughter for more than seven years and “did not express a desire to come” to her when told of her ex-husband’s persecution. In this regard, in early March, the girl was placed in a social institution.
The Chair of the State Duma Committee on the Family, Women and Children, Nina Ostanina, turned to the children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova with a request for help in transferring Alexei’s daughter Moskalev to relatives for education. The parliamentarian asked the commissioner for the rights of the child to “take the fate” of the teenager “under personal control, to participate in the hearing for the defense of the interests of the child, to take measures aimed at ensuring the opportunity to raise the daughter on her own”. mother or other relatives, and also do everything possible so that the child is not left without the attention of close relatives, transmits Interfax.
At the time of this publication, the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, Tatyana Moskalkova, and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, did not respond to RTVI’s requests. .
In connection with the verdict of Aleksey Moskalev in the New People parliamentary party asked the question of whether our country is going there.
“Now the Russian police and guard are looking for Alexei Moskalev with a large number of personnel in order to send him to prison. And at no time does the question even arise: what are we doing at all? Leaders like to say that family and children are sacred. And they point the finger at the West: look, they have juvenile justice, children are taken away from their parents. But isn’t the tribunal of Ephraim doing the same now? Or is it still ‘different’?” reads the message on the party’s telegram channel.
“New People” stressed that they were not calling for an assessment of the actions of Alexei Moskalev, but proposing “to treat the situation as a human being from the point of view of common sense”. Issues of this nature, according to party members, “should be resolved through dialogue, not prison.”
Deputy of the State Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Alexei Kurinny in his telegram channel also appointed the conviction of Aleksey Moskalev “a family tragedy difficult to justify by the seriousness of the offense committed or by an objective necessity”. Kurinny and New People noted that Efremov’s court ruling is “a good reason for anti-Russian propaganda”.
“What is it: performer kurtosis, a desire to curry favor with specific officials, or a deliberate systemic signal to society at large? If the latter, then it is wrong from the point of view of elementary humanism. Family and children must come first. I hope common sense and the position of the higher court,” Kurinny wrote.
Evgeny Prigozhin, the founder of PMC Wagner, also defended Alexei Moskalev. His press office published a letter from the League for the Protection of the Interests of Veterans of Local Wars and Military Conflicts to the prosecutor of the Tula region Alexander Gritsaenko, signed by the director of the organization Andrey Troshev, Evgeny Prigozhin and the commander of the Wagner PMC Dmitry Utkin.
“We consider the sentence imposed on Alexei Moskalev to be unfair, especially considering that his daughter will be forced to grow up in an orphanage,” the appeal reads.
The authors of the letter asked the prosecutor to verify the legality of the verdict and to authorize the lawyers of the “League for the protection of the interests of veterans of local wars and military conflicts” to act on the case, so that ‘they represent the defense side.
The letter also points out that Moskalev brought up his daughter without a wife, and after his arrest the 13-year-old girl was transferred to one of Efremov’s social institutions. The authors of the appeal described the situation in which children, left without parents, end up in orphanages as “a great tragedy for Russia and the future of our country”.
Member of the Human Rights Council (HRC) Eva Merkacheva in an interview with the radio station “Moscow Speaking” Express the hope that after public disclosure, the court could enter an acquittal.
“Today it is also clear to me that events will develop in a different direction. Most likely, the father will be acquitted – there are all the reasons for this. Everyone has already realized that destroying a family on such grounds was not just a provocation, but savagery. Now the most important thing, of course, is to return the child as soon as possible. It is not clear where dad is, because we have been looking for him since yesterday. I really hope that when he is found, no action will be taken against him and that he will not be put in prison. We hope that this whole conflict will be resolved as soon as possible, that the child will remain with the father and the court decision will be overturned.
