Five Russian Marxists handed long prison sentences for plotting to overthrow the regime

A court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg has sentenced five members of a Marxist group based in the city of Ufa in Baskhortostan to prison terms of between 16 and 22 years after finding them guilty of terror offences and plotting to overthrow the government, Mediazona reported on Tuesday.

The group’s founder, Alexey Dmitriev was given 20 years in prison, while Ukraine war veteran Pavel Matisov was given 22 years, Dmitry Chuvilin, a former member of Bashkortostan’s State Assembly, was sentenced to 20 years, Rinat Burkeyev, who worked for the Union of Donbas Volunteers, was given 16 years, and pensioner Yury Yefimov was handed 18 years.

According to investigators, the defendants discussed the violent seizure of power, re-establishing “Soviet power” and the communist regime and forcibly reintroducing the Soviet constitution in both Bashkortostan and Russia as a whole.

Testimony against the five men was provided by Sergey Sapozhnikov, who attended some of the group’s early meetings and previously fought on the side of the self-proclaimed pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic in Ukraine, according to Mediazona.

The five defendants denied the charges against them and said that they had been tortured and beaten during the investigation. In a closing statement to the court on behalf of the five men, one of the accused called the case “repression against communists”, and the prison terms requested by the prosecution a “silent execution”.