"Sometimes you should believe"

Vsevolod Korolev, sentenced to three years, should be released after 138 days. But the prosecutor's office can appeal the verdict

Vsevolod Korolev, 36-year-old director-documentary, philosopher, poet accused of "fakes" about the Russian army, the judge of the Vyborg District Court of St. Petersburg Marina Goryacheva sentenced to three years in a general regime. Exactly a month before, on February 20, in the debate of the state prosecutor - assistant prosecutor of the Vyborg district V. Akimov (he never even named his name in court) - requested the defendant 9 years from ten maximum possible under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The Korolev defense called the position of the prosecution “inadequate” and demanded a complete excuse of the defendant for the unproven guilt and the lack of corpus delicti. By a court decision, taking into account the time spent in the pre -trial detention center, Seva must be released in 138 days. However, the prosecutor’s office can still appeal the verdict.

Nevertheless, so far this is the first sentence in the northern capital according to the “fake” article, after which the relatives, friends, friends and acquaintances of the defendant and just sympathetic cried not from grief, but from happiness, hugged and hardly believed that such a miracle was possible. People perceived the accusatory sentence with the minimum sentence as acquittal.

"We will assume: lucky in the lottery"

“This is incredible, it is incredible,” Dmitry Vasiliev, a close friend of Seva, the editor of the Prisoner of Online, repeated in the first minutes after the sentence. He was so stunned that he did not even react to the urgent requests of the bailiffs to leave the meeting room.

- Three years?

- Exactly three years?

Almost all those present in court on March 20 asked each other to make sure that their hearing did not fail them.

“Yes,” Dmitry finally breathed back. - Time will count in a pre -trial detention center: a day for one and a half, and, consider it, they will be released soon.

- His. Soon. They will release, - that's how, with pauses after each word, a friend of Sevy Lydia powder repeated in an amazed voice.

For a year and a half (the trial in the Korolev case lasted so much - it was a record for a long time for both St. Petersburg and Russia) all meetings began with a significant delay (for example, the previous, March 18, for almost two hours). There was no reason to hope that otherwise it would be with the final meeting. However, it started almost on time, and in the end, many late for the threshold remained for 5-10 minutes, including Lydia Purchant.

“I was late and did not have time to get into the hall, I listened outside the doors to what was happening there,” said Lida after the meeting. - Only applause came to me, and I was very surprised, I thought: why applause? Seva should not perform today. And then everyone leaves the hall silently. No one says anything. I asked several times: what? Nobody answered me. Or they answered somehow evasively, as if they were afraid that if they say something now, then everything would melt as a vision. When a few minutes later I got an answer - “three years” - I realized why everyone was silent. I was not ready for this. On the contrary, I was preparing for the most bad and thought how to gather strength after the sentence, continue to work, live?

- Since we have no acquittal sentences in principle, such a sentence means that there was no case initially. It was simply impossible to admit it differently,

- commented on the court decision of the court Anatoly Korolev, the father of Vsevolod. - Now I have some relief, because it could be much worse. I have already said many times: this is a completely idiotic lottery. Let's assume: lucky in the lottery. So far, at the moment, lucky.

Relatives and friends of the Queen have been monitoring what sentences are sent out in similar cases. They do not exclude that the state prosecution will not survive such a fiasco and appeal the decision of Marina Goryacheva. But the defense of Seva is now considering the possibility of filing an appeal to the City Court of St. Petersburg.

"We must remember this name"

In conversations about the judge Goryacheva, who did not subside for a long time on March 20, director Alexei Malobrodsky, who specially came to the verdict of Vsevolod Korolev from Moscow, remarked: "We must remember this name."

Judge of the Vyborg District Court of St. Petersburg Marina Goryacheva is really the first of the judges (at least in St. Petersburg), to whom the students were approving after the verdict’s announcement under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - “the public distribution of knowingly false information about the use of the RF Armed Forces”.

When she, shaking her light curls, confidently raising her head and retired from the hall to applause, it recalled that it was Goryacheva that was never outraged and did not make comments during the process when the listeners applauded sowing (her colleague Judge Vasileostrovsky District Court Oksana Demyashev, who was considering the case of Alexandra Skochilenko, removed from the hall. All listeners, stopped and transferred court sessions). Goryacheva never left the audience behind the doors (only late), so in the small hall on the sixth floor, due to lack of places, people often stood during the meetings. When a woman fainted from the cramped and stuffiness at a meeting on March 18, Goryacheva immediately interrupted the meeting and asked him to transfer him to a more spacious hall.

-Over the years and a half, while we went to the courts to the north, periodically I saw something human in the judge: in her reactions, in her words, in her smiles,

- told the "new" acquaintance of Seva Natalya Alekseeva. - I thought: well, it cannot be such that this woman breaks life innocent. Like a living person, not a robot. Not in vain it turns out, hoping. There is something human in it ...

“Even some small things speak of humanity: for example, a person fainted in the hall, and we were immediately transferred to the hall,” continues Lida gunpowder. -Someone would say: in fact, it should be done, this is a manifestation of elementary humanity. But in our conditions, even such small manifestations of humanity should be noted, because it is now found far from everywhere and not always.

To the portrait of Marina Goryacheva, you need to add another stroke. It was in July 2022 that she turned out to be a matter aroused under Art. 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in relation to Boris Romanov, a member of the Yabloko party and the Human Rights Council of St. Petersburg, the chairman of the board of the housing cooperative No. 140. The reason for the criminal prosecution of the man served as a statement by representatives of the Svetlanovskoye MO, at a meeting of which Romanov made a pacifist speech on April 4, 2022. On July 28, 2022, considering the issue of the measure of suppression of Boris, Judge Marina Goryacheva replaced him with the detention in the pre -trial detention center for house arrest. Soon, Romanov and his wife and daughter left Russia.

Help "New"

The director-documentary, philosopher, poet Vsevolod Korolev was arrested on July 12, 2022. For two short posts about the events of spring 2022 in Buch, Borodyanka and Donetsk, located on the VKontakte social network, a criminal case was instituted against Seva under the paragraph of Part 2 of Art. 207.3 of the Criminal Code.

The investigation argued that Korolev spread inaccurate information about the RF Armed Forces based on political hatred and enmity. The director was transferred to court in October 2022. The maximum punishment that threatened him is 10 years in prison.