A police officer in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital. File photo MOSCOW, Feb. 1 Russians convicted in Sri Lanka for collecting bugs, after paying a fine, fly to Moscow on Tuesday, RIA Novosti was told at the Russian Embassy in Colombo. «Yesterday, January 31, Russian citizens paid the fine, received court permission to leave Sri Lanka and are flying to Moscow today,» the Russian embassy said.Three Russians were charged with collecting bugs in Sri LankaEarlier, the Russian Embassy in Colombo told RIA Novosti that a court in Sri Lanka had sentenced Russians accused of collecting bugs to a fine of more than 14 thousand US dollars and to a suspended sentence of 2 years .A researcher at the Rostov-on-Don Zoo Alexander Ignatenko and two of his companions, Nikolai Kilafyan and Artem Ryabov, were arrested on February 26, 2020 by the police for the protection of Sri Lankan reserves in the province of Nuwara Eliya. During the arrest, in Ignatenko’s pocket, the police found several dead beetles, which the scientist, according to him, forgot to throw away the day before. The trial in their case began on May 28, 2020. During this period, only a few witnesses were interviewed, including police officers who detained Ignatenko and his comrades in February last year. Ignatenko claims that he followed all the rules prescribed by the laws of Sri Lanka — he picked up only dead butterflies, beetles and small reptiles outside the territory of state nature reserves, photographed them, and then left them. The Sri Lankan authorities did not believe his testimony and charged him and his comrades with 301 counts of alleged offenses, of which 277 were alleged counts of killing insects and other small animals. However, during the meeting in August, the number of episodes incriminated to the Russians was reduced from 301 to 102. 14 thousand dollars
