Translated material
Three versions for court
Witnesses and the prosecutor's office are confused in the testimony in the “Sychev case”
The court in the “case of Private Sychev” has completed the interrogation of the main witnesses for the prosecution - military personnel of the Chelyabinsk Tank School. However, their testimony did not bring any clarity to the complicated case of hazing. Due to the testimony of colleagues of Andrei Sychev, who suffered during the New Year holidays from bullying by old-timers, the Chelyabinsk Military Garrison Court was forced for the second time to discuss the degree of independence of the military prosecutor’s office in this case. Let us recall that, according to investigators, at three o’clock in the morning on January 1, junior sergeant Alexander Sivyakov forced Private Sychev, with whom he had had personal conflicts since the fall, to sit down with emphasis on his toes. The young man sat in this position until seven o’clock in the morning.The first witness for the prosecution, Sergei Gorlov, who turned out to be an orderly that night, confirmed this version, but the next serviceman announced pressure on him from the prosecutor’s office. The version about a certain general from Moscow who demanded that he tell a lie became very popular and was voiced during the interrogation of Oleg Makarin. Information about the pressure during the investigation caused a lively reaction in the military prosecutor's office, and the new head of this structure, Sergei Fridinsky, even sent investigators to Chelyabinsk to conduct a new investigation.
On Wednesday, when the consideration of the case resumed, the next colleague of Sivyakov and Sychev, Artem Nikitin, also remembered the high-ranking military man. At the trial, he renounced the testimony given during the investigation, saying that during interrogations he was forced to sign protocols that had already been filled out for him. “I didn’t see anyone drinking alcohol that night,” said the witness, thereby refuting the investigation’s version: the indictment described the New Year celebration, and the incident with Sychev was presented as the result of a party.
He also announced that during the period described by the prosecutor's office, both the private and the junior sergeant were asleep. Artem Nikitin had to give other testimony because of the appearance of a “tall and big-shouldered” lieutenant colonel at the meeting with him, who threatened that if he refused, the private would become not a witness, but an accomplice. In his testimony, the young man also questioned the purity of the investigative experiment, since he said that before it was carried out, he was called to the same lieutenant colonel and received instructions on how to behave.
The state prosecutor asked Oleg Makarin, Sergei Gorlov and Ivan Dordzhiev, who were present in the hall, to comment on the words of their comrade. The first two servicemen announced that nothing of the kind had happened. Their further words confused the court even more. “What Nikitin is saying now, the general who came to us from Moscow asked me to tell him,” said Oleg Makarin. Dordzhiev also confirmed the words of Artem Nikitin. As a result, the court had two versions of the military’s intervention in the investigation: according to one, the prosecutor’s office forced him to testify against Alexander Sivyakov, according to the other, a certain interested party demanded to put on a performance at the trial.
This unsettled even the presiding judge, Yuri Shatsky. He announced a break in the meeting, after which he called Anton Shumilin, an investigator from the military prosecutor's office of the Chelyabinsk garrison, to testify. The latter surprised the court no less than Sychev’s colleagues. According to the investigator, on January 17, the four soldiers who gave such contradictory testimony in court spent the night at the prosecutor's office because they feared pressure from Alexander Sivyakov. Mr. Shumilin claims that the guys themselves applied to the prosecutor’s office with a request to apply the witness protection program to them, after which they settled in the premises of the supervisory authority, and the next day they were transferred from their unit to another. Artem Nikitin immediately announced that he had not signed any requests. The defense of Alexander Sivyakov questioned the voluntary nature of the overnight stay. At this point the meeting ended. In total, the court plans to question about fifty witnesses.