Translated material
There will be no apologies
The accused in the “Sychev case” made his final speech
The Chelyabinsk Garrison Military Court yesterday scheduled the announcement of the verdict in the scandalous criminal case of the crippled soldier Andrei Sychev for September 26. The court announced this date after the arguments between the parties ended at the last meeting.On Monday, at the trial, the prosecutor said that the guilt of the defendant - junior sergeant Alexander Sivyakov, because of whose bullying, according to the investigation, Sychev lost his legs - was fully proven. The state prosecutor asked for 6 years in prison for the accused, but the relatives of the injured soldier considered this too lenient a punishment and demanded that Sivyakov’s sentence be doubled - to 12 years in prison.
Yesterday, Sergeant Sivyakov himself and his lawyers told the court their vision of what happened. As expected, they, on the contrary, stated that the prosecutor’s office was unable to provide any evidence of Sivyakov’s guilt, and the sergeant himself once again announced that he had nothing to do with the tragedy of Private Sychev - he did not beat him and did nothing wrong at all. In this regard, the defendant’s defense asked Sivyakov to be acquitted.
The story of private Andrei Sychev, which became the reason for this trial and at one time served as the reason for a fierce war between the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Defense, occurred on the night of January 1 in the Chelyabinsk Tank School, where the soldier served in a support battalion. According to investigators, Sergeant Sivyakov then, for “educational purposes,” forced the young soldier to “watch TV” - sit in a half-squat position for several hours. As a result, a few days later the conscript was hospitalized with gangrene, and doctors had to amputate his legs.
Yesterday, during the debate, all three lawyers representing the interests of Sergeant Sivyakov spoke - Elena Dyusenbaeva, Elena Ustinovich, Alexander Petrov, who tried to convince the court that their client’s guilt had never been proven. “We were never able to find out the truth of what happened during the process. The prosecution is trying to present everything as if Sivyakov constantly violated the military regulations. But there is no evidence of this,” Ms. Dyusenbaeva pointed out. But the defense, in her opinion, brought a lot of evidence that the amputation of Andrei Sychev’s legs was not the result of someone’s bullying, but of his own hereditary disease and doctors’ mistakes. Speaking about Sivyakov’s possible guilt, they noted that the New Year’s emergency can only be interpreted as causing grievous bodily harm through negligence.
The most emotional performance was by Elena Ustinovich. “This is a tragedy for the Sychev family and the Sivyakov family. I speak as a woman, as a mother. There was another tragedy of another soldier - Sasha Sivyakov, a simple Russian guy, from a simple family, from a small provincial town in the Rostov region. Sivyakov could not have had any reason to mock Sychev. Since he, like Sychev, was a first-year student, who, according to military rules, do not have the right to put pressure on colleagues.”
At the same time, Ms. Ustinovich noted that the indictment base, built on only three protocols of the interrogation of Andrei Sychev, in her opinion, is untenable, since the private was interrogated between operations and could have been inadequate. In addition, the defense announced that the increased public interest in this case is far-fetched and has no real basis. The result of the speeches of all three defenders was the same - Sergeant Sivyakov must be acquitted and released.
After this, Alexander Sivyakov himself made the last word. At the beginning of his speech, he asked for an apology from two other privates - Alexander Satushkin and Alexander Akhmetov, who are also victims in this case. According to the investigation, several months before the incident with Sychev, Sivyakov struck them in the forehead and chest. The defendant, apparently, remembered the apology under the impression of the speech made the day before by Andrei Sychev’s sister, Marina Muffert. She then drew the court's attention to the fact that since the beginning of the investigation, the accused had not apologized to her brother. However, the sergeant did not apologize to Andrei Sychev himself. In his last word, he only repeated again that he was not to blame for the tragedy that befell Sychev.