Russian court releases anti-Putin protester who has spent a year in pretrial detention

St. Petersburg’s Dzerzhinsky District Court released Mikhail Tsakunov from a pretrial detention center after he signed a pledge not to leave the city. Tsakunov was arrested after the “He’s Not Our Tsar” protests in May 2018.

The photographer Georgy Markov wrote on Twitter that the state prosecutor had supported the defense’s request to transfer Tsakunov out of detention.

The defense also requested that the charges against Tsakunov be shifted from “using life-threatening violence” toward a policeman to “using non-life-threatening violence.” A hearing on that matter will be held on May 16. Investigators claim that Tsakunov knocked out a policeman’s tooth, while the defendant has denied the charges against him.