Overview

• Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the election watchdog Golos, was sentenced to five years in a general-regime prison colony by a Moscow court on May 14, 2025.
• The charges stem from alleged ties to the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), declared 'undesirable' in Russia in 2021, though Golos denies any ongoing connection.
• Melkonyants and his defense team have rejected the charges as politically motivated and announced plans to appeal the verdict.
• Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have condemned the sentencing as a crackdown on peaceful activism and called for Melkonyants's immediate release.
• This case is part of a broader Kremlin campaign to suppress civil society and independent election monitoring, which has intensified since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.