Maxim Druzhinin, detained in the case of the attempt on Solovyov’s life, spoke about beatings during a search

One of the suspects in the case of the assassination attempt on TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov, 32-year-old Maxim Druzhinin, after his arrest, reported beatings during his arrest. His defender Svetlana Sidorkina told Mediazona about this.

Druzhinin’s complaint, which Sidorkina sent to the Investigative Committee, states that during a meeting with the detainee, she herself saw bruises on his body; the injuries were also noticed by members of the Public Monitoring Committee who visited the detainee.

Druzhinin said that during the search, masked special forces beat him, including with brass knuckles, demanding confessions “to actions that he did not commit.” According to the detainee, the operatives threw him “bottles with a clear liquid and an object that looked like a grenade.”

In addition, PMC member Eva Merkacheva, who on April 29 visited the detainees in the temporary detention center on Petrovka, 38, told Mediazona that one of them complained of poor health due to lack of medicine.

“A guy with a serious psychiatric diagnosis, he took pills three times a day when he was free. He started to have a tremor. He said that he has poor spatial orientation. We asked to call him an emergency psychiatric service, who would look at what medications he had previously taken and would give him something. Then we left and called an ambulance,” Merkacheva explained.

She did not give the name of the person involved, but among the detainees there are two people who were serving compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital - Andrei Pronsky and Vasily Strizhakov.

On April 25, the Investigative Committee reported on the detention of six members of the National Socialism/White Power group , who, according to the investigation, wanted to blow up Solovyov’s car. They are suspected of preparing to kill a person in connection with his official activities by a group of hired persons in a generally dangerous manner (Part 1 of Article 30; paragraphs “b”, “e”, “g” and “h” of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code).

The next day, the Basmanny court sent two defendants, Vasily Strizhakov and Alexander Druzhinin, to pre-trial detention. On April 27, the same court arrested three more: Andrei Pronsky, Vladimir Belyakov and Vladimir Stepanov, and on June 6, Timofey Mokiy. With the exception of Druzhinin, all of them have previous convictions, including for racist violence.

Druzhinin lived in Khotkovo near Moscow and worked as a painter for Russian Railways. According to the telegram channel “White Suit,” he “simply loved the romance of prison and thieves,” so “when free he walked around in a prison uniform for the sake of passion, for fun.”