The Konakovo City Court of the Tver Region sentenced local resident Andrei Trofimov to ten years in a maximum security colony in the case of military “fakes”, attempt jointo the legion“Freedom of Russia”. Activist Maria Bovenko, who corresponds with Trofimov, reported this to Mediazona.
Bovenko clarified that she learned about the verdict from Trofimov’s relatives. According to the case file on the court’s website, the decision was announced on October 17.
Trofimov was detained and arrested in May 2022 in Konakovo. At first he was charged only with calls for extremism. In December of the same year, it became known that a criminal case was opened against the man regarding military “fakes,” and in March 2023, about an attempt to join the “Freedom of Russia” legion. The trial in Trofimov's case was held behind closed doors.
According to investigators, Trofimov, in correspondence with “unidentified persons,” agreed to join the “Freedom of Russia” legion and “received a plan to illegally cross the border with the aim of arriving” in Ukraine, where he planned to fight against the Russian army. Other details of the case are unknown.
The man himself said that he completely agreed with the accusation. According to Trofimov, he tries not to resort to the help of appointed lawyers and asked to assign him the maximum possible sentence, because he does not recognize the legality of the court at all.
On September 17, Trofimov, who is in pre-trial detention center No. 1 in the Tver region, went on a hunger strike demanding the delivery of letters detained by censorship.
“On Sunday the 17th [September] I took out all the remaining products from the cabinet (there was nothing left — there was no stall for the whole of September), leaving only tea and coffee. I wrote a statement addressed to the head of the pre-trial detention center, Colonel Kudryashov, saying that I was stopping food intake. <…> When it was time for lunch, the employee opened «feeder», instead of food containers, I put a bag of food there and gave the surprised girl a statement,” he said in a letter to Bovenko.
“The first sip is for the health of thieves.” A Russian woman living at the foot of Mont Blanc organized correspondence with all political prisoners of one pre-trial detention center in Tver