The defendant in the "Network" case, Maksim Ivankin, has stopped communicating from the penal colony. He could have been sent to a punishment cell

The defendant in the "Network" case, Maxim Ivankin, has stopped communicating from Correctional Colony No. 9 in Chuvashia, where he is serving a 13-year sentence. There has been no contact with him for four days, his wife Anna Shalunkina reported on Facebook on April 3.

"He hasn't felt safe in IK-9 Chuvashia lately, so we agreed that if he doesn't call for three days, we should start sounding the alarm," Shalunkina said. She noted that in addition to Ivankin, some other prisoners in the colony also didn't call home, "which suggests that something happened in IK-9."

The duty officer at Colony No. 9 told Shalunkina that her husband had been sent to a punishment cell for 10 days “for violating the rules.”

In March, lawyer Konstantin Kartashov, who represents Ivankin, told Novaya Gazeta that law enforcement officers had pressured his client to confess to complicity in the murder of 19-year-old Ekaterina Levchenko and 21-year-old Artem Dorofeev.

"They (the security forces) began to intimidate him, hinting at physical violence. According to them, it would look like suicide, and since he is registered in pretrial detention center No. 1 as being prone to suicide, other versions of what happened will not be considered," Kartashov said.

• In February 2020, seven defendants in the "Network" case from Penza were sentenced to six to 18 years in prison. After the verdict, their acquaintance Alexei Poltavets told Meduza that he and one of the convicted, Maxim Ivankin, killed their mutual acquaintances, Ekaterina Levchenko and Artem Dorofeev, in 2017. In March, Levchenko's remains were found in a forest in the Ryazan region, not far from where Dorofeev was murdered.