The state prosecution demanded 19.5 years in prison for the father of many children who threw Molotov cocktails at paddy wagons in Moscow

During the debate in the Moscow City Court, a representative of the prosecutor's office, Elvira Zotchik, demanded that Vitaly Koltsov, the father of many children, accused of setting fire to paddy wagons, be sentenced to 19 years and 6 months in a maximum security colony. This was reported by a Mediazona correspondent from the courtroom.

The state prosecutor decided that Koltsov’s intent to kill the riot police was proven, since the jury decided that he threw the bottle at both the paddy wagons and the riot police.

On June 6, a jury found Koltsov guilty of intentional damage to property (Part 2 of Article 167 of the Criminal Code) for setting fire to a paddy wagon in the center of Moscow. The defendant was also charged with attempted murder of 12 National Guard members (Article 317 of the Criminal Code), but was acquitted on this count. The majority of the jury found that Koltsov deserved leniency.

The reason for the criminal prosecution of the Muscovite was that on May 2, 2022, he threw two Molotov cocktails at two paddy wagons standing on Revolution Square. A bottle with a flammable mixture bounced off one paddy wagon, but the second still caught fire. At one of the meetings, Koltsov said that he wanted to commit a symbolic arson as a sign of protest, without planning to harm anyone, but the prosecution insisted that Koltsov’s goal was precisely the attempted murder of security forces.

The fire in the paddy wagon was extinguished after a minute and a half. An explosives expert on the defense side conducted an examination of the case - he came to the conclusion that Koltsov’s actions could not have led to the death of Russian Guard employees, even those who could have been inside the buses. The expert pointed out that Koltsov threw both bottles into the corners of the bus opposite the diesel tank, so there was no threat of explosion. Despite this, the court did not accept the examination as evidence.

“I have the impression that freedom of assembly in our country is significantly infringed. I see this as a serious threat to the future of our country, because in this way the people cannot point out their mistakes to the authorities, and those who do nothing do not make mistakes. Realizing this and feeling sympathy for those who are arrested for exercising their legal right, and also because of my unwillingness to go out with my mouth shut, I came up with the idea of ​​​​a separate protest action - non-violent, but forceful, in order to speak out loudly enough, to attract attention of the authorities and the public to the problem,” Koltsov explained his actions during one of the court hearings.

Muscovite has been in pre-trial detention for more than a year. On May 5, it became known that the case of attempted murder of security forces and deliberate arson of property against him would be considered by a jury.