Petersburg court sentences to ‘Network’ terrorism case suspects to a combined 12.5 years in prison

A military court in St. Petersburg has sentenced two suspects in the so-called “Network” case to a combined 12.5 years in prison. Twenty-five-year-old computer programmer Viktor Filinkov and 28-year-old alpinist Yulii Boyarshinkov will go to prison for seven and five and a half years, respectively, for their supposed roles in organizing an alleged terrorist group among leftist activists in Penza and St. Petersburg. (Boyarshinkov was also convicted of illegal possession of explosives.)

Many defendants in the Network case say they were tortured into signing confessions. In February, seven suspects in Penza were sentenced to between six and 18 years in prison.

After the verdicts were announced, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the courtroom and police made several arrests. 

Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Filinkov and Boyarshinkov to nine and six years in prison, respectively. Filinkov maintains his innocence and says he was tortured into signing a confession. Boyarshinkov pleaded guilty to the charges.

In February, Alexey Poltavets — an acquaintance of the Network case suspects in Penza — told Meduza that he and Maxim Ivankin (who has now been sentenced to prison) murdered their friends, Ekaterina Levchenko and Artyom Dorofeyev, in 2017. In early March, Levchenko’s remains were recovered outside Ryazan, not far from where Dorofeyev’s body had been discovered earlier. On March 12, their murder cases were merged and transferred to federal investigators.