Russia Sentences Teen Activist Who Defied Riot Police With Constitution Reading Updated: May 11, 2021 Olga Misik became a symbol of Russia’s opposition after she read the Constitution in front of riot officers at a protest. Sergei Savostyanov / TASS
Russia has sentenced a prominent young activist to over two years of home confinement on vandalism charges amid the country’s widening crackdown on dissent, the Mediazona news website reported Tuesday.
Olga Misik, 19, became a symbol of Russia’s pro-democracy movement after she read the Constitution to a line of armored riot officers at a July 2019 protest against the barring of allies of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny from Moscow city council elections.
Misik and two other young defendants, Ivan Vorobyevsky and Igor Basharimov, are charged with vandalizing government buildings. In a gesture of support for those they consider political prisoners, they hung banners on a railing outside a Moscow district court on August 8, 2020, and then splattered red paint on a security booth outside the Prosecutor-General s Office building. Prosecutors claim they caused 3,500 rubles ($47) in damages.
Defense attorneys say that the documents provided by prosecutors concerning the alleged damages
were falsified and that no harm was caused by the water-soluble paint.
Under the charges, they could face up to three years in prison when Moscow s Tverskoi District Court delivers its decision on May 11. Prosecutors, however, have asked for two years of restricted liberty for Misik and one year and 10 months for the other defendants,