MOSCOW, March 15 The Second Western District Military Court on Wednesday sentenced to 13 years in prison a young man who threw a Molotov cocktail into the building of the military enlistment office in Lukhovitsy near Moscow, a correspondent reports from the courtroom.
«On the basis of the totality of crimes, finally appoint Butylin Kirill Vladimirovich 13 years in prison,» the presiding judge Vitaly Bakin announced the decision. He will spend the first three years in the harshest conditions, in prison, and the next ten in a strict regime colony.
It is still unclear whether the defense will appeal the court's decision: Butylin himself told reporters that he did not plan to do so, but his lawyer, on the contrary, said the opposite, calling the sentence «excessively harsh».
The case was heard by a panel of three judges and was considered in two sessions.
Butylin himself fully admitted his guilt. State prosecutor Yekaterina Minaeva requested just 13 years in prison, while asking to take into account the positive characteristics of the defendant.
The defense asked that the case be reclassified as an attempted murder, and that the punishment be «the minimum possible.» Butylin supported his defender in the last word, but was brief and did not add anything more.
As the investigation found out, on February 28, 2022, Kirill Butylin broke the window of the building of the joint military enlistment office of Lukhovitsy and Zaraysk, located in Lukhovitsy, and threw a Molotov cocktail there, and painted the flag of Ukraine on the gate.
They managed to detain him already in Belarus while trying to escape, on the border with Lithuania. He is charged with three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — on a terrorist attack, vandalism and public calls for terrorism, which involve up to 20 years in prison.
Butylin himself fully admitted his guilt in court, and his mother compensated the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for damage from arson — 193.6 thousand rubles. The court received a check from the payment on Wednesday and terminated the proceedings on the suit of the Ministry of Defense in this part, the agency's correspondent reports.
As a representative of the military department noted in court, Butylin's motive was «political hatred against the NVO», which resulted in «the intention to desecrate the buildings of the military commissariat.»