Search
The 2nd Western District Military Court has sentenced 59-year-old Sergey Evstigneev, a resident of Domodedovo, a town near Moscow, to eight and a half years in prison on charges of financing terrorism (part 1.1 of Article 205.1 of the Criminal Code). Mediazona reports this, citing the court’s press service.
For the first two years, Evstigneev must serve his sentence in prison; the remainder will be in a strict-regime penal colony. Investigators claim that from March 2022 to February 2024, he transferred 11,531 rubles (approx. US$125) to the “Artpodgotovka” movement.
The prosecution of Evstigneev became public in the spring. At first, his acquaintances reported that he had not been in contact for about two months. It later emerged that he was in a pre-trial detention centre. In May, he was added to the list of “extremists and terrorists.”
Evstigneev is officially recognised as a person with second-degree disability status and is permanently registered at a tuberculosis dispensary. According to his acquaintance, human rights advocate Gennady Makarov, the man’s lung problems began after imprisonment in the USSR. During the Soviet era, Evstigneev was convicted under the article for “anti-Soviet agitation.” In Domodedovo, he engaged in political activism and ran for the city council as an independent candidate.
Vyacheslav Maltsev’s “Artpodgotovka” movement was declared extremist and banned in Russia in 2017. In 2021, the FSB added one of the movement’s alleged branches to the list of terrorist organisations.