Vitaly Barinov, an English teacher from Kansk who was sentenced to two years and ten days in prison for shooting at a pro-war banner, has been released from penal colony No. 13 in the Sverdlovsk region. His relatives have already met him in Yekaterinburg. This was reported to OVD-Info by Barinov's correspondents.
Barinov was detained on October 17, 2022. According to investigators, the man shot at a "Contract Service - Your Choice" banner in the city center the previous evening with a hunting rifle registered to him, and then threw a bottle of Molotov cocktail at it. Law enforcement officials also claim that Barinov then threatened a neighbor he met with a weapon. A case was opened under articles on hooliganism with the use of weapons (Part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code) and on the threat of murder (Article 119 of the Criminal Code).
In February 2023, Barinov reported torture. According to him, after his arrest, security forces wanted to force him to confess to setting fire to the military registration and enlistment office in Kansk on September 24, 2022. They put a bag wrapped in tape on the man's head, preventing him from breathing, and also shocked him.
Barinov was sentenced on April 21, 2023: he was sentenced to two years and ten days in a general regime penal colony. The teacher admitted his guilt, explained his actions as a nervous breakdown due to the announcement of mobilization, and said that he was very sorry.
In May 2023, the man said that he was being pressured in the pretrial detention center. In a letter, he wrote that before the verdict, he "stumbled and fell, cut my forehead and broke my leg." "I heard from some people that the security forces will not leave me alone. [...] Most likely, I will slip and fall again, breaking my face." In June, the prosecutor's office recognized the actions of the pretrial detention center employees as legal.
Clarification: Initially, we mistakenly indicated the term as 2 years and 10 months, but correctly indicated 2 years and 10 days.
- At the moment, more than 900 people have become defendants in criminal cases initiated due to protests against the war with Ukraine. Read more about this in our infographic .