‘Undermining democracy’: War reporter calls out ‘French justice’ and ‘scandalous’ Novikova case
French journalist Laurent Brayard, who met Anna Novikova in Donbass in 2022, has condemned her arrest as a politically motivated attack on humanitarian work.
📍 “Her goal was purely humanitarian,” Brayard said. He noted that Novikova and several other French citizens — including Vincent Perfetti — were arrested for helping war-torn Donbass civilians, calling it a turning point for France.
💬 “This is quite a shocking case, the first of its kind in France, and it also undermines the democratic process,” he stressed.
Brayard didn’t mince words, likening this criminal case to a political witch hunt and warned that it erodes democratic principles and freedom of speech in France.
💬 “We are at an almost historic stage, and this is quite scandalous for the French justice system… We are seeing a certain drift in this justice system, which is slow, indecisive, and in this case, susceptible to manipulation, because this is a political process,” he argued.
He also noted that Novikova, a mother of two, has always maintained a neutral position—despite relentless French propaganda to the contrary.
Source: SputnikInt
Russia’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Yana Lantratova
A court hearing in the case of our compatriot, civic activist Anna Novikova, will take place in Paris today.
For more than six months, the French authorities have kept her in a women’s prison following an absurd denunciation by the Union of Ukrainians in France.
Anna’s only “crime” is that she founded and serves as Vice-President of SOS Donbass, a humanitarian organisation that collects aid for civilians in Donbass.
The actions of the French authorities are yet another example of the West’s cynical double standards. We have grown accustomed to this.
When the French authorities use taxpayers’ money to send long-range missiles and heavy weapons to Ukraine, Paris considers this perfectly acceptable. Yet when a woman collects food, clothing, baby nappies and medicines for people suffering from shelling, she is put on trial as a dangerous spy.
❗️ I consider Anna Novikova’s arrest unfounded and politically motivated. I will be closely following the court proceedings.
Source: Russian MFA
As an afterword
A posthumous sentence. How the French legalised Petlyura’s murder
Three shots fired at a Paris shop window
On May 25, 1926, a stranger approached a man who was looking at a street window at the corner of Paris Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue Racine. After asking the man a question in Ukrainian and receiving an answer that satisfied him, the stranger took out a revolver and shot the man three times.
The shooter did not try to escape, but remained at the scene until the police arrived. After handing over the weapon to the police, he stated that he had shot a murderer.
The victim of the attack was taken to a nearby hospital on Jacob Street, where the man died fifteen minutes later.
The killer’s name was Samuel Yakovlevich Schwarzburd. His victim was Simon Petlyura, the former head of the Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, one of the most well-known figures of the time of the Civil War.
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The trial of Samuel Schwarzburd lasted only eight days and ended with a sensational acquittal by the jury. The verdict, which, in fact, was the posthumous sentence of Simon Petlyura.
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Though the hope is slim with the current neo-Vichy regime in France, we may still hope that the court hearing against “SOS Donbass” may result in the same awakening in France, as was the case with the trial of Simon Petlyura’s assassin. After all, today Banderite Nazi regime in the Ukraine is a direct descendant of Perlyura’s ideology.