OddsFrontMoscow court upholds refusal to reopen Gorinov case, Meduza reports
The imprisoned former councillor also sought medical assistance during a hearing, while UN findings remain central to his defence.
Moscow City Court upheld a refusal to reconsider the criminal case against imprisoned former municipal councillor Alexei Gorinov, Meduza reported on September 8, citing courtroom coverage. Gorinov participated by video from a penal colony in Russia's Altai region. The outcome leaves his defence facing another setback in its effort to secure a review grounded in United Nations findings.
During the hearing, Gorinov said requests for medical help were not being registered and asked the court to assist, according to Meduza. He also raised the possibility that he had been poisoned. No medical evidence establishing poisoning was available in the inspected sources, and that statement remains his allegation. Meduza reported that the court declined his request for assistance.
The international findings behind the challenge
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention examined Gorinov's original prosecution in Opinion 78/2022. Its analysis linked his detention to protected expression and participation in public life. It also found serious due-process defects, including inadequate individual justification for pretrial detention. These findings concern the earlier proceedings; they do not independently establish what happened during the September 8 hearing.
The working group's reasoning explains why an international assessment can remain relevant even after a domestic conviction. It concluded that proceedings should not have occurred for the protected conduct at issue, then separately assessed the fairness of the trial that nevertheless took place. The document records the original seven-year sentence and its subsequent reduction to six years and eleven months.
A wider dispute over anti-war speech
A separate UN special rapporteur's report, dated September 16, 2025, places Gorinov's later prosecution within a broader pattern of using national-security and terrorism legislation against dissent. It describes a further case concerning alleged conversations with fellow prisoners about the war in Ukraine. The report also questions the prosecution's handling of expert linguistic evidence after an initial assessment did not identify justification of terrorism.
Those institutional documents provide background for evaluating the case, rather than a new diagnosis or an account of the latest court session. The immediate questions are whether Gorinov receives a documented medical examination and whether his lawyers obtain a substantive review of the UN findings. Neither the hearing report nor the older institutional assessments establishes that either step has now been secured.