The trial of Maxim Ivankin from the Network case has begun; he is accused of double murder in a forest near Ryazan

The Ryazan Regional Court has begun the trial of Penza resident Maxim Ivankin, convicted in the “Network” case, who is accused of murdering his friends Ekaterina Levchenko and Artem Dorofeev in the forest near Ryazan (Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code). The case is being considered by a panel of eight jurors, the trial is conducted by judge Natalya Kianovskaya.

What happened in court: opening remarks by the state prosecutor

At the first meeting, as a Mediazona correspondent reports, prosecutor Oksana Mayakova addressed the jury with an opening speech, outlining the prosecution's version. It is that Ivankin, “being a member of the interregional terrorist community “Network”,” also committed an attempt to sell drugs. “Fearing exposure and criminal prosecution,” he fled to Ryazan in April 2017. Together with him were Alexey Poltavets (his investigation also considers him involved in the “Network”), as well as Artem Dorofeev and Ekaterina Levchenko, whom the prosecutor called “involved in drug distribution.”

But soon Dorofeev and Levchenko “expressed their intention to stop hiding.” Thus, according to the prosecutor, they were going to perform “public duty” and “socially useful actions.” Fearing that the couple would testify against the others, Ivankin and Poltavets decided to kill them. To do this, they “under false pretenses” went with them into the forest, and Ivankin took with him two Saiga carbines. The investigation believes that Poltavets and Ivankin agreed in advance who would kill whom, “distributing roles.”

At the end of April - the prosecutor did not indicate a more precise time - the company spent the night in the forest about four kilometers east of the village of Lopukhi. The next morning, Ivankin, under the pretext of collecting brushwood, took Catherine away from the place where she spent the night. So they divided the couple and deprived Dorofeev and Levchenko of the opportunity to help each other.

Ivankin, according to the prosecution, inflicted at least two wounds on Levchenko with a knife, causing her “injuries to the retroperitoneal region, abdominal cavity, chest, and large blood vessels of the neck.” The girl died on the spot. After this, Ivankin returned to his overnight stay. The Poltava resident, seeing that he was walking alone, and his hands were stained with blood, realized that an accomplice had killed Catherine.

Then Poltavets, the investigation believes, shot Dorofeev with a Saiga and finished him off with a knife. Dorofeev, as experts concluded, died from a “multi-fragmented comminuted fracture of the facial part of the skull.”

“I don’t recognize the charge brought against me... I simply urge the jury to think critically,” said defendant Maxim Ivankin in court, commenting on the state prosecutor’s speech.

Lawyer Alexey Mikhalchik, who represented the side of the victims - the family of the deceased Ekaterina Levchenko - addressed the jury this way: “Ekaterina’s mother told me: “I have to find out with the help of professionals whether the person is behind bars...” But our position is that the defendant’s guilt has been proven . We see this based on the case materials.”

Interrogation of the parents of the deceased

The process began with interrogations of Ekaterina Levchenko’s parents. They told how and when they last communicated with her, as well as how they sought an investigation into the disappearance of the couple - and a certain Ilya Khesin helped them with this. This is a person from among the acquaintances of the alleged members of the Network, who contacted Ekaterina’s mother and told her his version of events - later Khesin became one of the sources in the Meduza article, after the publication of which the Investigative Committee began to actively investigate the murder of Levchenko and Dorofeeva.

At the next hearing, which is scheduled to take place on February 15, the court plans to interrogate Artem Dorofeev’s relatives. As Maxim Ivankin’s lawyer Konstantin Kartashov told Mediazona, in total about 80 witnesses were questioned during the investigation.

Ivankin was convicted in the Network case; according to him, he signed a confession in the murder case under torture

In February 2020, Maxim Ivankin was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security colony in the Network case. A month later, an acquaintance of the Penza defendants in the case, Alexey Poltavets, who fled to Ukraine , told Meduza that in April 2017, he and Ivankin killed their friends Ekaterina Levchenko and Artem Dorofeev in the forest near Ryazan.

Before this, the young people fled from Penza together, fearing criminal prosecution for drug trafficking. Ivankin himself denies guilt. The ex-girlfriend of Poltavets, Victoria Frolova, claimed that he told her that he himself stabbed Levchenko and Dorofeev, explaining that the friends wanted to surrender to the security forces.

Ivankin’s wife Anna Shalunkina in October 2021 demanded that a criminal case be opened for abuse of power against employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service, FSB and Investigative Committee, who tortured her husband “in order to force him to incriminate himself and sign a confession to the murder of Levchenko and Dorofeev.”

At the same time, the lawyer visited Ivankin in the Ryazan pre-trial detention center-1. The prisoner told him that in Vladimir IK-3, where he was during the transfer, he was “beaten, humiliated, threatened with rape and death.” Ivankin also reported that in the hospital at IK-3, other convicts forced him to write a confession in the murder case near Ryazan.

In January 2022, those convicted in the Network case, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Arman Sagynbaev and Andrei Chernov, spoke about threats from the investigator who was leading the murder case. “He began to threaten me that if I did not testify against Maxim Ivankin, then they would come up with some kind of accusation against me,” Pchelintsev said. “He hinted that if you add any amount to my sentence, it will be a life sentence.” But in the end, only Ivankin was charged in this case.