The visiting collegium of the Eastern District Military Court sentenced Uvarov to five years in prison and a fine of 30,000 rubles. (11.2 thousand UAH), report head of the human rights group “Agora” Pavel Chikov and “New Newspaper”.
Two other defendants in the case were released from criminal liability for contributing to the investigation. The prosecutor’s office asked to appoint Uvarov nine years in prison, two of his friends – 6.5 each.
Teenagers were accused of undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities (Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The trial was held behind closed doors.
Uvarov was taken into custody in the courtroom, Chikov said on Telegram.
Uvarov’s lawyer Vladimir Vasin intends to appeal the verdict. The execution of the sentence is suspended until the complaint is considered on the merits, so Uvarov will not be sent to a colony for the time being, but will be kept in a pre-trial detention center in Kansk.
“If they give me a real term, I will serve it with a clear conscience and dignity. I will be calm, because I never taught my friends bad things, I was not their leader, we were equals and just friends. I didn’t slander anyone. I am not ashamed in front of people, relatives and strangers, who know about our history. Let someone believe not in me, but in law enforcement agencies, I have nothing to be ashamed of. I did not intend to blow up anyone … For the last time at this trial, I would like to say: I am not a terrorist, I am innocent,” Uvarov said at a court hearing on February 7, in his last speech, which cites “New Newspaper”.
He asked the court to give him the opportunity to get an education and go somewhere, “so that no one here from the special services would be nervous and not nervous himself and become some kind of freelancer or someone else in his specialty.”
The case against the teenagers began two years ago when they were 14 years old. Uvarov spent almost a year in jailbefore the court decided not to extend his arrest.
In the summer of 2020, they put up leaflets in support of MSU graduate student Azat Miftakhov (his accused of hooliganism because of a broken window in the office of the United Russia party and later sentenced to six years in prison). When security officials gained access to schoolchildren’s phones, they found correspondence in which friends discussed how they wanted to build and blow up the FSB building in the Minecraft game.
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a case against them. According to investigators, the teenagers “united into a group for the subsequent joint implementation of terrorist activities.” Nikita Uvarov, who was 14 at the time of his arrest, was sent to a pre-trial detention center, and two other defendants, Denis Mikhailenko and Bogdan Andreev, were placed under house arrest. The Insider reported that two teenagers were forced to write confessions – they later withdrew their testimony and stated that they had slandered Uvarov, who was in the case as an “organizer of the cell”, under pressure from the investigation. Uvarov pleaded not guilty.
Case was terminated due to the lack of corpus delicti, all the defendants were recognized the right to rehabilitation, reported on March 9, 2021 “New Newspaper” with reference to a copy of the decision. At the same time, the accusation of “training in order to carry out terrorist activities” remained in force.
In addition, on March 9, the Investigative Committee opened new cases against teenagers – about the manufacture and storage of explosives, reported “Mediazone” in the press service of the regional department of the committee.
Investigators claim that schoolchildren “were independently trained in the manufacture of explosives, made and practiced their use in practice in an abandoned house, on wastelands and construction sites.” The teenagers themselves did not deny their chemical experiments in the garage and in the wasteland, but categorically disagree that they were “trained in terrorism” and hatched a plan to undermine the offices of the FSB or the Ministry of Internal Affairs, wrote “New Newspaper”.
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