In his closing statement, Grigory Melkonyants emphasized that his criminal prosecution required the fulfillment of two key conditions:
- proof that Golos is a structural subdivision of the international organization ENEMO, which has been declared undesirable in Russia;
- evidence of specific criminal actions by Melkonyants aimed at organizing ENEMO’s activities.
According to the defense, neither the preliminary investigation nor the court proceedings met these requirements.
The Russian Ministry of Justice confirmed that Golos is not listed among undesirable organizations and that it has no information about ENEMO having structural units in Russia.
A letter from ENEMO’s Executive Director further stated that Golos has never been a member or a structural part of the organization. This separation was also reflected in the Ministry of Justice’s 2021 decision to place Golos and ENEMO in two separate official registers.
Melkonyants argued that without a ruling from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, equating Golos with ENEMO is legally invalid. He stated that the Basmanny District Court effectively assumed the authority of the Supreme Court by retroactively redefining Golos’s status.
On May 14, 2025, Grigory Melkonyants was sentenced to five years in a general-regime penal colony and banned from engaging in public and political activities for nine years following his release.