YAROSLAVL, April 3 Both defendants in the criminal case of forging a document that was used in organizing the murder of Russian political scientist Darya Dugina, for the first time before the Proletarsky District Court of Tula, partially admitted guilty, they told the court.
Earlier, the hearings in the case were postponed because one of the two defendants, Andrei Kuznetsov, was first ill, and then he was transported from the Moscow pre-trial detention center to the Tula region, but they did not make it to the appointed time. The court was told that on Monday both Kuznetsov and Alexander Suchkov were present at the hearing for the first time.
«Both partially admitted their guilt,» the court said. They specified that the defendants assure the court that they did not know that the document they had forged would be used for illegal border crossing.
According to the joint press service of the judicial system of the Tula region and the administration of the judicial department in the Tula region, during the meeting on Monday, the testimony of one prosecution witness was read out.
«Due to the impossibility of the trial due to the failure of the remaining witnesses for the prosecution to appear, the trial was postponed. The next trial in the case will take place on April 11, 2023 at 14.00,» the statement says.
The Prosecutor General's Office reported that Andrey Kuznetsov and Alexander Suchkov in 2017-2022 were engaged in the manufacture and sale of forged documents. In August 2022, in the city of Aramil, Sverdlovsk Region, Suchkov and his accomplices produced a registration certificate for a Mini Cooper car, handed it over to Kuznetsov, who printed it out on the official form of a Ukrainian vehicle registration certificate. This car, as reported by the FSB, was used to monitor Dugina, when entering Russia he had DNR numbers, in Moscow — Kazakhstani, and when leaving Estonia — Ukrainian. Currently, Kuznetsov is in a pre-trial detention center, Suchkov is under house arrest.
Dugina died on the evening of August 20, 2022 in a car explosion on Mozhaisk highway in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region. The FSB said that the Ukrainian special services were behind the murder, the perpetrator was Ukrainian citizen Natalia Vovk.
According to the Proletarsky District Court of Tula, the document prepared by Kuznetsov and Suchkov was used by Vovk between August 17 and 21, 2022. Accomplices are tried under part 4 of article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Forgery of documents in order to hide another crime), they face a maximum of up to 4 years in prison. The defendants «realized that this forged document would be used to facilitate another crime — illegal crossing of the state border of the Russian Federation,» the investigation believes. The trial is taking place in Tula at Kuznetsov's place of residence. -1856218842.html» data-title=»The Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented on the assassination attempt on Malofeev»>