The “Moscow Case”

Photo © Vikotria Odissonova / Novaya Gazeta

Danil Beglets

Sentenced for Allegedly Assaulting Police or Russian Guard (Rosgvardia) Officers

Photo © Vikotria Odissonova / Novaya Gazeta

Kirill Zhukov

Sentenced for Allegedly Assaulting Police or Russian Guard (Rosgvardia) Officers

Photo © Vikotria Odissonova / Novaya Gazeta

Pavel Ustinov

Sentenced for Allegedly Assaulting Police or Russian Guard (Rosgvardia) Officers

Photo © Anna Artemyeva / Novaya Gazeta

Evgeny Kovalenko

Sentenced for Allegedly Assaulting Police or Russian Guard (Rosgvardia) Officers

Evgeny Kovalenko (born 1971) is a railroad station security guard from Moscow region. On September 4, Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court found him guilty of assaulting a police officer (Article 318 part 1 of Russia’s Criminal Code : “use of violence against an official constituting no risk to either life or health”) and sentenced him to three years and five months in a medium-security corrections facility. The charges stemmed from allegations that on July 27, Kovalenko pushed a police officer and threw a metal trash bin at another. Both officers alleged that his actions caused them physical pain. In court, Kovalenko said that at around 6 p.m., on the corner of Rozhdestvenkaya Street and Theater Drive, he saw police officers using excessive force against peaceful protesters, including using batons to hit people already tackled to the ground. While not denying that he pushed one of the officers to prevent him from hitting a protester, Kovalenko did not admit to aiming at and hitting the other officer with the bin. Video footage available shows a man throwing a bin toward an officer. It also shows use of excessive force by police against protesters.

Photo © Vikotria Odissonova / Novaya Gazeta

Ivan Podkopaev

Sentenced for Allegedly Assaulting Police or Russian Guard (Rosgvardia) Officers

Ivan Podkopaev (born 1993) lives in Moscow and works in a library as a technician. On September 3 the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow found Podkopaev guilty of assaulting a police officer (Article 318 part 1 of Russia’s Criminal Code : “use of violence against an official constituting no risk to either life or health”) and sentenced him to three years in a medium-security corrections facility. The charges stemmed from allegations that on July 27 at around 2:30 p.m., Podkopaev sprayed pepper spray towards Russian Guard officers on Tversakaya Street. Podkopaev said he did this after he saw police allegedly using a metal police barricade to “squash people, including women and the elderly.” Video footage released to the media by Russian investigative authorities shows police and Russian Guard officers with metal police barricades advancing on the crowd and a man with his face covered up spraying a chemical substance. Podkopaev did not deny the allegations and expressed contrition.

Update: On appeal, on October 9, 2019, the Moscow City Court reduced the sentence to two years.

Photo © Vikotria Odissonova / Novaya Gazeta

Konstantin Kotov

Sentenced for Repeated Violations of Regulations on Public Gatherings

Of all the protest activists who were criminally charged in August, only 34-year-old Konstantin Kotov, a software engineer from Moscow, was accused not of specific actions at the protests but rather of "repeated violations of regulations on public gatherings" under Article 212.1 of the Russian Criminal Code. The charges against Kotov stemmed from the fact that during a six-month period, he took part in three protests in support of political and rights issues, called in a Facebook post in July for people to join a protest against the exclusion of opposition candidates from the Moscow legislature elections, and took part in an election-related protest in August. The investigation into Kotov's case was completed and the case was moved to trial in less than a week. Such swiftness is unprecedented compared to the regular timeframe of criminal investigations and trials in Russia. On September 5, the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow sentenced Kotov to four years in a medium-security corrections facility. Before Kotov’s sentencing, only one person in Russia had been convicted and served time serial involvement in unsanctioned protests. Prosecutions for such serial assembly violations was enabled by draconian legislation adopted in 2014.

Update: On appeal, on October 14, 2019, the Moscow City Court upheld the sentence.

Update: Sentence reduced by Moscow City Court to 1 year and 5 months on second appeal on Apr 20th.

Photo © Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

Yegor Zhukov

Convicted of extremist calls over criticizing the government in YouTube videos

Yegor Zhukov, 21, studies political science at one of Russia’s leading universities, the Higher School of Economics. He is also a political vlogger, with more than 148,000 followers. Zhukov was arrested on August 2 on charges of mass rioting, which stemmed from allegations that during the July 27 unsanctioned protest he supposedly organized a large group of young people into ranks and led them to block police officers on the corner of Tverskaya Street and Kamergersky Lane. Moscow students organized a vigorous campaign for Zhukov’s release, which was also supported by some academics and high-profile journalists. When the authorities asked a court to put Zhukov in pre-trial custody, the investigation presented video footage from the site showing a young man whose face was not discernable organizing protesters. On August 30, Novaya Gazeta, a prominent Russian independent newspaper, published their video footage, in which the man’s face is clearly visible and bears no resemblance to Zhukov. On September 3, authorities dropped the mass-rioting charges against Zhukov, but charged him with making extremist calls online over several videos he recorded and published in his vlog in 2017. The investigation alleged that he “decided to engage an unlimited circle of people in his extremist activities, aimed at destabilizing the social-political situation in the Russian Federation.” Notably, the videos, which expressed Zhukov’s dissatisfaction with the current situation in Russia and its government, included no calls for violent actions. On the same day, a court released him from jail and transferred him to house arrest pending trial on the new charges. An active campaign in his support is ongoing. His trial began on December 3. The prosecutor asked for four years’ imprisonment. On Dec 6th, sentenced to three years’ suspended imprisonment with three years’ probation period and two years’ ban from administering websites.

Photo © Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

Alexei Minyailo

Charged with Mass Rioting

Alexey Minyailo (born 1985) is a developer of educational games for children in orphanages and a pro-democracy activist who volunteered at the headquarters of one of the unregistered candidates, Lyubov Sobol. Starting mid-July, Minyailo was involved in the election-related protest activity—both at street gatherings and on social media. On July 27, he spent the day at Khamovniki District Court in Moscow, where police had delivered Sobol in an apparent attempt to prevent her from taking part in the protest taking place that day. In the evening, Minyailo headed to Trubnaya Square, one of the venues for the unsanctioned protest, but detained him just as he was approaching the site. Minyailo spent two days in custody and was charged with participation in an unsanctioned gathering that interfered with traffic and the movement of pedestrians. On August 1, at around 4 a.m., law enforcement officers searched his house as part of an investigation into alleged mass rioting on July 27 and arrested him on charges of participation in mass rioting. On September 26, following a wave of public support—including support from 182 priests from the Russian Orthodox Church—a judge with the Basmanny District Court ordered his release because the evidence against him did not include any information about “organizing mass disorders accompanied by violence or destruction of property.”

Photo © Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

Sergey Fomin

Charged with Mass Rioting

Sergey Fomin (born 1983) was a volunteer at the headquarters of one of the unregistered candidates, Lyubov Sobol. He took part in several unsanctioned protest gatherings—including one held on July 27—after opposition candidates were excluded from the ballot for city legislature elections. On July 31 at 4 a.m., police in Moscow searched the apartment where he lives with his parents. They then took him to the Investigative Committee, Russia’s chief criminal investigative agency, to interrogate as a witness into alleged mass rioting on July 27. Fomin refused to answer the investigator’s questions and was released pending further investigative activities. He left Moscow for a week. According to Fomin, when he returned to the city on August 8, he found out that as of August 5 he was wanted on charges of participation in mass rioting and that governmental-controlled media was portraying him as an organizer of mass riots. He turned himself in at the Zamoskvorechye District Police Department in Moscow on the same day. The next day, a court ruled to transfer him to a pre-trial detention facility. On September 3, another court ruled to transfer Fomin’s to house arrest. Charges dropped on Dec 6th.