The Proletarsky District Court of the city of Tula sentenced Andrey Kuznetsov and Alexander Suchkov, who made fake documents for a car used by the alleged murderer of journalist Darya Dugina, a citizen of Ukraine Natalia Vovk, to 3.5 years in prison each. They will serve their term in a general regime colony.
According to the verdict, after serving the term, convicts are prohibited from administering websites and instant messengers for two and a half years.
The defendants were found guilty of “forgery of documents committed with the aim of hiding another crime or facilitating its commission” (part 4 of article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). It provides for a maximum sentence of up to four years in prison.
Earlier, during the debate of the parties, state prosecutor Natalya Bezgina requested three years and 11 months of imprisonment in a penal colony for each of the defendants.
Suchkov’s lawyer Alexander Luchin, in turn, told Business FM that he insisted on reclassifying his client’s actions to the softer part 1 of Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. It provides for a maximum sentence of two years in prison.
According to the defense counsel, the materials of the case did not prove that the defendants tried to hide another crime, namely the illegal crossing of the state border by Natalia Vovk. “The materials of the criminal case do not even contain data that a case was initiated against Vovk for illegally crossing the state border (Article 322 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation),” Luchin noted.
In turn, Kuznetsov’s lawyer argued that the vehicle registration certificate was not a document required for crossing the border, unlike a technical vehicle passport. In this regard, the lawyer said, this fake document was not essential for the departure of Natalia Vovk from the Russian Federation.
Earlier it was reported that by the beginning of the trial, Kuznetsov fully admitted his guilt, and Suchkov partially. According to RIA Novosti, at the end of the trial, both defendants partially pleaded guilty. According to the defendants, they were not aware that the documents they had produced would be used for illegal crossing of the state border. The defendants asked the court to take into account their assistance to the investigation, as well as repentance and not to assign real terms.
During the process, Kuznetsov is in a pre-trial detention center, and Suchkov is on bail. After the verdict was announced, the latter was taken into custody in the courtroom.
Political scientist and journalist Daria Dugina died on August 20, 2022 in the Moscow region when a car exploded, which, according to media reports, was supposed to drive her father, philosopher and political scientist Alexander Dugin. Both that day participated in the music and poetry festival “Tradition”. The FSB accused the former serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Natalya Vovk of carrying out the crime, and the Ukrainian special services were called the organizer there. Kyiv denies involvement in the attack.
The investigation found that a fake vehicle registration certificate for a Mini Cooper car in the name of a real-life citizen of Kazakhstan, Yulia Zaiko, was made in August 2022 by Suchkov and Kuznetsov together with “other accomplices”. At the same time, the Investigative Committee notes that the production of fake documents for cars for money was put on stream by the defendants and their accomplices. They hunted this from at least January to September 2022.
Natalya Vovk entered Russia in a car with DPR license plates, and then changed them to Kazakh ones. With them, she left Russia after planting a bomb in Dugina’s car. According to the intelligence service, a member of the Ukrainian sabotage group, 45-year-old Bogdan Tsyganenko, who fled from Russia the day before the bombing, helped prepare the murder of Vovk (she came to Russia with her 12-year-old daughter). Vovk left the country through the Baltic states the day after the crime.
The Investigative Committee of Russia charged both of them in absentia with “murder in a generally dangerous way by a group of persons by prior conspiracy or by an organized group motivated by political hatred (paragraphs “e”, “g”, “l” of part 2 of article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Pension Fund)”. The court ordered their arrest in absentia.
