State prosecutor in the “high-altitude case” Dmitry Pugachev spoke out against the war and gave an interview to “Navalny LIVE”

Former assistant to the Tagansky interdistrict prosecutor and prosecutor in the “high-altitude case” Dmitry Pugachev said that he left the prosecutor’s office, then took up legal practice, and since 2022 has been speaking out against the war. An interview with Pugachev, who was previously included in the FBK Black Notebook, was published by the Navalny LIVE channel.

“20-25 people staged a rally near the Russian Embassy here in [the capital of Slovenia] Ljubljana. When the war started, on the first day, I wrote on Instagram that I was against the war, that it was criminal, that I condemned it. Later, I wrote in more detail about why there is fascism in Russia now, about the fact that this cannot be tolerated, and about the fact that it is normal to make mistakes,” said Pugachev.

According to a former employee of the prosecutor's office, now he has no relation to government agencies - he and his wife opened a coffee shop. He added: “After I left the prosecutor’s office, two weeks later I met my future wife and had a child. My views were revised - on raising children, on the world around me, I became an absolute liberal and an absolute pacifist. <…> Then I was rather a homophobe, an Imperial.”

In August 2014, Ukrainian roofer Pavel Ushivets painted a star on the spire of a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in Moscow in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Despite the fact that Ushivets publicly took responsibility for this, four BASE jumpers, who later jumped from a high-rise with parachutes, were accused of vandalism and hooliganism for political reasons (Part 2 of Article 214 and Part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code).

Pugachev then asked for three years in prison for each, except one of the girls, who was pregnant. He asked her to be given a suspended sentence. At the same time, the state prosecutor knew about the innocence of the base jumpers. As a result, the Tagansky District Court acquitted four paratroopers - Alexander Pogrebov, Alexei Shirokozhukhov, Evgenia Korotkova and Anna Lepeshkina, and also sentenced roofer Vladimir Podrezov, who was on the roof of the high-rise with Ushivets, to two years and three months in prison.