Daily Journal:

Judge Ukhnaleva confirmed her reputation. This is a judge who has repeatedly issued indictments against oppositionists, this is a judge who appears on the “Magnitsky list.” This is the judge who ignored all the obvious evidence of my innocence and issued a ruling confirming the supposed legality of my arrest on December 31st. She ignored the testimony of defense witnesses. I had no illusions about the outcome of the trial, but it was interesting to see how the judge would get out, because there was obvious evidence of my innocence - the testimony of a police officer who said that the report was falsified. The judge considered that the police sergeant’s testimony in court could not be reliable, since he gave it under stress - apparently, the Holy Scripture was pressing on him - and his report was written in a normal psychological state, so it is important material evidence of my guilt.

The police officers were clearly prepared to speak in court; representatives of the press service of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate were present there to ensure that they said everything correctly. Charukhin actually began to read his speech from a piece of paper, but after he was reprimanded, he tried to formulate his thoughts himself. However, the police officers began to lash out when asked questions. In particular, Sergeant Kondrashev confirmed that his report was drawn up in error. Popsuev also could not confirm all the data from the report. These testimonies, by the way, were given under pressure, we are convinced of this. The fact is that after the scandalous statements of Sergeant Charukhin, he was publicly threatened with dismissal by the official representative of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Viktor Biryukov, which, naturally, influenced both his corrected testimony and the testimony of other witnesses, who are also police officers. However, the judge did not take into account our arguments and not a word was said about pressure from the police authorities in the final decision. Lieutenant Burtsev, who led the arrest, did not speak in court, since, in violation of procedural norms, he was in the courtroom during the hearing, while witnesses should remain outside the courtroom until they were interrogated. The judge concluded that he could not be questioned as a witness. But I don’t think his testimony would have changed much.

We will definitely appeal this decision; for me this is a matter of principle. We will definitely bring this to the end, we will appeal to the Moscow City Court and, probably, to the European Court of Human Rights. In general, there is a feeling that it is impossible to achieve justice in Russian courts, so you will have to turn to the European Court.