As it became known to Kommersant, the Moscow City Court did not release from custody the participants in the conflict that occurred last summer between former members of the StopHam social movement (liquidated at the request of the Ministry of Justice) and soldiers of the Grom police special forces. The civilian participants in the incident, which took only a few minutes, were charged with group hooliganism and the use of violence against government officials.
According to the TFR, driver Aleksey Gorbachevsky, student Kirill Kotov, online store manager Kirill Bunin, and a fourth unidentified person “decided to commit hooliganism by a group of people.” Their plan called for “detection of an indefinite group of persons” and unleashing a conflict with it using “an insignificant reason.” To this end, on June 23, 2022, at 3 p.m., the defendants, according to investigators, gathered in the parking lot in front of the Tanuki restaurant at the beginning of the Yaroslavl Highway.
As the object of the attack, according to the TFR, the hooligans chose the vehicle crew of the Grom special forces detachment of the drug control department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow, located in the parking lot.
As it was established by the investigation, the lieutenant colonel of the 4th combat squad of the Thunder and the senior lieutenant of the 6th squad were performing a “special task” near the Tanuki. The police officers were in “uniform uniforms” and sat in a service Ford Focus, but this circumstance did not stop the attackers.
The conflict, according to investigators, was started by Kirill Kotov. Approaching the passenger car, he committed some “provocative and illegal actions.” The police, as follows from the prosecution, saw in the student’s behavior “signs of an administrative offense” and asked him to stop the disgrace. Meanwhile, Kotov’s friends appeared at the parking lot and “began to exert physical, moral and psychological pressure on the policemen.” The victims, as stated in the case file, decided to detain the alleged hooligans and applied a “self-defense technique” to Alexei Gorbachevsky, knocking him to the asphalt. But at that moment, the same student Kotov rushed to defend his comrade. According to investigators, he “grabbed the senior lieutenant from behind,” and then squeezed his chest with such force that he tore the policeman’s T-shirt.
After, according to the investigation, all four hooligans together beat the policemen. The medical examinations appointed by the investigation registered bruises on the soft tissues of the head and chest, abrasions and bruises on the hands of the security forces.
None of the injuries, according to doctors, caused “loss of health and disability” of the police. Nevertheless, all their opponents were accused by the ICR of group hooliganism (part 2 of article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, up to seven years in prison) and the use of violence against a representative of the authorities (part 1 of article 318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, up to five years in prison).
In September 2022, the prosecutor’s office transferred the case to the Babushkinsky District Court, but at the preliminary hearings, the defendants’ defense convinced the judge that it was premature to consider it on the merits. According to the lawyers, friends Gorbachevsky, Kotov and Bunin planned not a hooligan attack on the special forces, but a dinner at the Tanuki. At that moment, when Kotov was walking along the sidewalk to the entrance to the restaurant, where the rest of his comrades were waiting for him, he was run over by the front bumper of a Ford Focus without any distinguishing marks. As a result of the collision, Kotov was forced to lean his hands on the hood of the car, which did not please the officer who was driving it. The latter left the salon and began to make claims about this, which led to a conflict.
At the same time, the young people could not understand that they were dealing with law enforcement officers, since one of the security forces was wearing a camouflage suit without shoulder straps, and the other was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with the inscription “Thunder” on the back. Therefore, opponents mistook them “either for guards from a private security company with that name, or for fishermen in general.”
Hearing from the as yet unidentified policemen the phrase “We are on duty!”, the young people, according to them, asked to see their documents. According to the defense, it was the refusal of the police to present their IDs that served as a catalyst for the conflict. “No one in their right mind would oppose the special forces,” the lawyers believe.
Interestingly, the verbal skirmish and violent conflict, according to the defense, lasted only seven minutes and ended without outside interference. Moreover, after the skirmish, the opponents began to wait together for the arrival of patrol crews, while already having quite peaceful conversations. At the same time, the entire course of the conflict was recorded in detail on a video recording presented by the defense to the investigation and widely distributed on the Internet.
The Babushkinsky court recognized the charge against the young people as incorrect, since the position set out in it “does not contain indications of circumstances important for a fair trial, is misleading and excludes the possibility of an objective decision by the court.”
So, according to the judge’s decision, the prosecution, for example, spoke about the “provocative actions” and “physical impact” of the defendants in the case on the police, qualified as hooliganism, but the investigation, according to the court, did not explain what exactly these actions were expressed.
Violence against a representative of the authorities, according to the court, also remained in question, since it was not clear from the case file which of the accused and which of the victims used it. The criminal case was eventually returned to the prosecutor to remove obstacles to its consideration by the court. The supervisory authority appealed the decision to the Moscow City Court, but the appellate instance upheld it.
At the same time, the defendants were left in custody. A few days ago, the Moscow City Court approved another extension of the term of arrest for the accused, citing the fact that the group hooliganism imputed to them belongs to the category of serious crimes. According to the defense, such a tough accusation and measure of restraint may be due to the fact that young people were previously members of the StopHam social movement, which opposes gross violations of traffic rules by drivers and often irritates both motorists who turned out to be unwitting participants in their actions, and and law enforcement officers who had to deal with the “road wars”.
However, in the dispute in the parking lot in front of the Tanuki, according to the defense, the defendants participated simply as indifferent citizens who were outraged by the movement of the car along the sidewalk and the collision with one of them. In this regard, the lawyers consider the accusation of hooliganism to be inappropriate to the circumstances of the case.