Moscow City Court overturns verdicts in case against prominent soccer players
Update: The Moscow City Court acquitted Pavel Mamayev of disorderly conduct charges and sentenced him to a year’s correctional labor for battery. The court also overturned the disorderly-conduct convictions of Kirill Kokorin and Alexander Protasovitsky, converting their prison sentences to terms of correctional labor. Meanwhile, the court upheld Alexander Kokorin’s 18-month prison sentence for battery.
The Moscow City Court has overturned the verdicts handed down in one of the capital’s most controversial cases in the past two years. The decision revokes previous rulings that imprisoned two popular soccer players, as well as two other men, for assault.
In June 2019, the same Moscow City Court upheld the verdict against the four men. In May 2020, however, an appellate court ordered a new appeals review “in light of material violations of the law.”
On October 8, 2018, the soccer players Pavel Mamayev and Alexander Kokorin, as well as Alexander Protasovitsky and Kokorin’s brother, Kirill, took part in two fistfights in Moscow. First, the men brawled with a Vitaly Solovchuk, a driver who works for the state-run television network Pervyi Kanal, and then they fought with Denis Pak, an official at Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry. The suspects were later convicted of deliberately inflicting minor harm — charges to which they partially confessed. Kokorin and his brother were sentenced to 18 months in prison, while Mamayev and Protasovitsky were each given 17 months behind bars.
Pavel Mamayev and the Kokorin brothers were granted early parole on September 17, 2019, after spending 11 months in pretrial detention. Protasovitsky was denied parole and went free on November 8, 2019.