NTV released a film about the “Penza case”

NTV published a film about the “Penza case”, for the filming of which the channel’s employees persecuted lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov, as well as members of the Public Monitoring Committee Yana Teplitskaya and Ekaterina Kosarevskaya.

In the film, the wife of Viktor Filinkov, a defendant in the Penza case, Alexandra Aksenova, is called the “chief ideologist” of the “terrorist community Network.”

“Arrests of radicals took place throughout the country. According to some reports, the group from Penza was only part of the Network organization. The possible head of the structure was a 23-year-old programmer from St. Petersburg, Viktor Filinkov, and the main ideologist was his wife Alexandra Aksenova. It is noteworthy that they did not even give their real names to members of the Network,” the film says.

“Calling for terror and an armed coup is commonplace for Alexandra Aksenova. According to some reports, she carried out subversive work while still an active participant in Euromaidan, and later even underwent special training in one of the women’s battalions that took part in the punitive operation in the Donbass. Aksenova’s conspiracy skills, dubious biography and radical views—certain conclusions suggest themselves,” continues the author of the film.

Blogger Kirill Strelnikov appears as an expert in the film, according to whom all these facts indicate that Aksenova was recruited by the SBU. She, according to the blogger, came to Russia to create “a radical movement modeled on the Ukrainian Right Sector (banned in Russia), which is what we got in the form of the terrorist organization Network.”

“According to experts, it was no coincidence that Aksenov placed her bet on anarchists. Promoting their ideals, [she] recruited members of the movement into her extremist organization,” the film says.

NTV employees also spoke with the mother of the anti-fascist Ilya Shakursky, a defendant in the “Penza case,” Elena Bogatova. The woman herself said that she was forced to give an interview to NTV by an investigator who promised that her son would “get credit for it in court.”

The investigator also told Arman Sagynbaev’s mother Elena Strigina to give an interview to NTV. According to the woman, when asked why she should talk to NTV employees, the investigator answered her: “Well, they give him medicine.”

Employees of the TV channel also waylaid Filinkov’s lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov in St. Petersburg, as well as members of the Public Monitoring Committee Yana Teplitskaya and Ekaterina Kosarevskaya. Kosarevskaya was asked why she “uses the feelings of parents, promising to help their children,” and how often she meets with the Ukrainian consul. Teplitskaya was told that she was “acting in the interests of the Right Sector.” They asked Cherkasov why he was “defending terrorists” and whether he really “supported the Maidan.”

At the same time, Tatyana Mitkova, editor-in-chief of the information service of the NTV channel , told Meduza that she knew nothing about employee Maria Borzunova, who tried to interview Kosarevskaya.

“It is quite possible that these are not our employees, but impostors. You know, federal TV channels often face the problem that strangers introduce themselves as our employees,” the St. Petersburg office of NTV told Meduza.

Filinkov himself said that they tried to “attribute him to both the Maltsevites and the Ukrainian nationalists.” They asked him what he was doing in Kyiv.

In addition to Viktor Filinkov, there are several other defendants in the “Penza case”: Yegor Zorin, Ilya Shakursky, Vasily Kuksov, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Andrey Chernov, Arman Sagynbaev, Igor Shishkin and Yuliy Boyarshinov.

Pchelintsev , Shakursky and Filinkov , as well as witness Ilya Kapustin , detained in St. Petersburg, said that FSB officers tortured them, extracting confessions. According to the FSB, members of the Network planned to carry out explosions during the presidential elections and the World Cup in order to “sway the masses to further destabilize the political situation in the country,” as well as to raise an armed rebellion.