The prosecutor requested life imprisonment for all five accused of blowing up the head of the occupation administration of Mikhailovka

In the Southern District Military Court, the prosecution representative requested punishment for five defendants in the case of blowing up the head of the occupation administration of the village of Mikhailovka in the Zaporozhye region, Mediazona learned.

The prosecutor asked 35-year-old Alexei Kirichenko, 24-year-old Alexander Lyakhovchenko, 36-year-old Dmitry Novikov, 22-year-old Danila Smolu and 50-year-old Vladimir Teterev to be sentenced to life imprisonment under the article on an act of international terrorism. In addition, under the article on trafficking in explosives organized by the Smole group, the state prosecutor requested an additional 9 years, Kiricheno and Novikova - 12 years each, and Tetereva and Lyakhovchenko - 14 years each.

All defendants must spend the first five years in prison, the prosecution insists. In addition to imprisonment, the prosecutor requested a fine of 500 thousand rubles for each of them.

All five defendants spoke in court about the abduction and torture. On March 9, the 125th Military Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee refused to initiate proceedings on their allegations of torture.

“During their testimony, the defendants explained that from August 23 to November 27, 2023, that is, their official detention, they were, let’s say, unofficially detained by masked FSB officers, who systematically used violence against them, beat them, and, as a result, forced them to sign some documents that contained testimony incriminating them of committing crimes. After they were forced to sign them as a result of torture, their official detention was already organized,” Judge Igor Kostin said at one of the hearings on the case.

The head of the occupation administration of Mikhailovka, Ivan Sushko, died in the hospital on August 24, 2022, the day before his car exploded near the building of the village military-civil administration. The Investigative Committee immediately reported that the investigation was taken under personal control by the head of the department, Alexander Bastrykin. Security forces reported on the arrest of the suspects on December 1, 2023. In September 2024, the case was submitted for consideration to the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. The Prosecutor General's Office then wrote that, according to investigators, Teterev took a bomb from the cache, installed it under the bottom of the car and detonated it, and the rest of the accused were watching Sushko. A video of the explosion was published by Izvestia.