In the Ryazan Regional Court, the trial of Maxim Ivankin, convicted in the Network case, from Penza, who is accused of murdering his friends Ekaterina Levchenko and Artem Dorofeev, in a forest near Ryazan (Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code) has begun. The case is considered by a panel of eight jurors, the trial is led by Judge Natalya Kianovskaya.
What happened in court: opening remarks by the public prosecutor
At the first meeting, according to a Mediazona correspondent, prosecutor Oksana Mayakova addressed the jury with an opening speech, outlining the version of the prosecution. It consists in the fact that Ivankin, «being a member of the interregional terrorist community» Network «, also made an attempt to sell drugs. “Fearing exposure and prosecution,” he fled to Ryazan in April 2017. Together with him were Aleksey Poltavets (the investigation also considers him involved in the «Network»), as well as Artem Dorofeev and Ekaterina Levchenko, whom the prosecutor called «involved in the distribution of drugs.»
But soon Dorofeev and Levchenko «expressed their intention to stop hiding.» Thus, according to the prosecutor, they were going to fulfill their “public duty” and “socially useful actions”. Fearing that the couple would testify against the others, Ivankin and Poltavets decided to kill them. To do this, they «under a fraudulent pretext» went with them to the forest, and Ivankin took with him two Saiga carbines. The investigation believes that Poltavets and Ivankin agreed in advance who kills whom, «distributing roles.»
At the end of April — the prosecutor did not specify a more precise time — the company spent the night in the forest about four kilometers east of the village of Lopuhi. The next morning, Ivankin, under the pretext of collecting brushwood, took Ekaterina away from the place of lodging for the night. So they divided the couple and deprived Dorofeev and Levchenko of the opportunity to help each other.
Ivankin, according to the prosecution, inflicted at least two knife wounds on Levchenko, causing her «injuries to the retroperitoneal region, abdominal cavity, chest, large blood vessels of the neck.» The girl died on the spot. After that, Ivankin returned to the place of lodging for the night. Seeing that he was walking alone, and his hands were stained with blood, Poltavets shot Dorofeev from the Saiga and finished him off with a knife, the investigation believes. Dorofeev, according to this version, died from a “multi-fragmentary comminuted fracture of the facial part of the skull.”
“I don’t recognize the charge … I just urge the jury to think critically,” defendant Maxim Ivankin said in court, commenting on the speech of the state prosecutor.
Lawyer Aleksey Mikhalchik, who represented the side of the victims, the family of the deceased Ekaterina Levchenko, addressed the jury: “Ekaterina’s mother told me: “I have to find out with the help of professionals whether the person is behind bars …” But our position is that the defendant's guilt has been proven. We see this on the basis of the materials of the case.”
Interrogation of the parents of the deceased
The process began with interrogations of Ekaterina Levchenko's parents. They told how and when they talked with her for the last time, and also how they sought to investigate the disappearance of the couple — and a certain Ilya Khesin helped them in this. This is a person from among the acquaintances of the alleged members of the «Network», who contacted the mother of Ekaterina and told her his version of events — later Khesin became one of the sources in the Meduza article, after the publication of which the Investigative Committee began to actively investigate the murder of Levchenko and Dorofeeva.
At the next meeting, to be held on February 15, the court plans to interrogate the relatives of Artem Dorofeev. As Konstantin Kartashov, Maxim Ivankin's lawyer, told Mediazone, about 80 witnesses were interrogated during the investigation.
Ivankin was convicted in the Network case, according to him, he signed confessions in the murder case under torture< /h3>
In February 2020, Maxim Ivankin was sentenced to 13 years in a strict regime colony under Network Case. A month later, Alexei Poltavets, an acquaintance of the Penza defendants in the case, who fled to Ukraine, told Meduza that in April 2017, together with Ivankin, he killed his friends Yekaterina Levchenko and Artyom Dorofeev in a forest near Ryazan.
Before that, young people fled Penza together, fearing criminal prosecution for drug trafficking. Ivankin himself denies guilt. The ex-girlfriend of Poltavets, Victoria Frolova, claimed that he told her that he himself had stabbed Levchenko and Dorofeev, explaining that his friends wanted to surrender to the security forces.
Ivankin's wife Anna Shalunkina in October 2021 demanded to open a criminal case on abuse of office authorities against the employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service, the FSB and the Investigative Committee, who tortured her husband «in order to force him to incriminate himself and sign a confession in the murder of Levchenko and Dorofeev.»
“They forced me to learn and retell turnout by heart.” Ivankin, convicted in the Network case, talks about how he was forced to confess to a murder near Ryazan
At the same time, the lawyer visited Ivankin in the Ryazan SIZO-1. The prisoner told him that in Vladimir IK-3, where he was during the stage, he was «subjected beaten, humiliated, threatened with rape and reprisals.” Ivankin also reported that in the hospital at IK-3, other convicts forced him to write a confession in the murder case near Ryazan.
In January 2022, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Arman Sagynbaev and Andrey Chernov was told about the threats of the investigator who was in charge of the murder case. “He began to threaten me that if I did not testify against Maxim Ivankin, they would come up with some kind of accusation against me,” Pchelintsev said. “He hinted that if you add as much as you like to my term, you get a life sentence.” But in the end, only Ivankin was charged in this case.