The person involved in the “Putin is a thief” graffiti case will be forcibly taken to court from the hospital

The Voroshilovsky District Court of Rostov-on-Don decided to forcefully bring in Kirill Skripin, a defendant in the “Putin is a Thief” graffiti case: he will be taken to court hearings from the hospital where he is staying due to an open form of tuberculosis. Activatika reports this.

The court considered the defendant’s failure to appear at the hearing on February 3 as a violation, despite the medical documents provided by the defense.

“His disease is dangerous because death can occur at any moment, and there will be literally a few hours to help him. <...> to stay alive, he does not need to attend court,” Skripin’s lawyer Irina Gak explained to Activatika.

In March 2021, the FSB reported on the arrests of members of an “extremist group” who were preparing to “paint offensive inscriptions” against the authorities on the walls of houses in Rostov-on-Don. Among those detained that day were Skripin, Mikhail Selitsky and their minor acquaintance.

Criminal cases were opened against Selitsky and Skripin under the article of vandalism based on political enmity (Part 2 of Article 214 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, they wrote “PUTIN IS A THIEF” on one of the city buildings, thereby expressing “obvious disrespect for society.”

Skripin spent several months in pre-trial detention, in September 2021 he was released without any documents or explanations, and in December the prosecutor's office approved the indictment in his case. In October 2022, the man fell ill with tuberculosis, and therefore the proceedings against him were suspended.

Selitsky was sentenced in October 2022 to one and a half years of restriction of freedom and compulsory outpatient treatment in a psychiatric hospital. On appeal, he managed to reduce the term of restriction of freedom by a month.

The judge who considered Selitsky's case in the first instance indicated in the verdict that he committed the crime as part of a group of people - that is, with the participation of Skripin, whose sentence has not yet been passed.

• On the day of the arrest of Skripin, Selitsky and their acquaintances, security forces published a video with a story from one of the alleged members of the “extremist group.” On the recording, he said that his radical views “were formed under the influence of one of the Internet communities in Telegram, the moderators of which are in Poland.”