During the debate in the 2nd Western District Military Court, the prosecution requested 16 years in a maximum security colony for serviceman Stanislav Ionkin in the case of a fire in the Kostroma Polygon club. TASS reports this with reference to its correspondent.
In addition to the main punishment, the prosecutor also asked the court to deprive Ionkin of the rank of guard sergeant and the medal “For Courage”. According to investigators, as a result of the military’s actions, a fire started in the club, which killed 13 people.
According to information on the court website, the man is accused of kill, hooliganism with the use of weapons, intentional damage to someone else's propertyand causing moderate harm. In addition, he is charged with causing damage in the amount of 68 million rubles. Relatives of the victims and those injured in the fire also filed civil claims against the military man — in total they demand recovery of 52.5 million rubles from him.
As the security forces found out, on the night of November 5, 2022, a drunken Ionkin was in the Polygon club — there he had a conflict with one of the visitors, it was an employee of the Russian Guard Maxim Egorov. To intimidate the security officer, the military man took a flare gun and fired it upward, causing the ceiling of the club to catch fire, then the fire quickly spread throughout the building. Later, Ionkin, already on the street, fired seven more times from a rocket launcher in the direction of the Polygon. The serviceman did not admit his guilt in the case, writes TASS.
Ionkin’s defense insists that the defendant could not objectively assess what was happening in the club, since he had previously suffered shell shock due to his participation in the war in Ukraine. “In a difficult situation, Ionkin gets lost and is prone to implementing ill-considered decisions, which is confirmed by a psychological and psychiatric examination,” noted lawyer Yuri Khromtsov. Therefore, the defense insisted on reclassifying the charges as more lenient.
Ionkin himself reported that he had to defend himself from the National Guard and that he “did not imagine that because of this shot people would not leave the club and would die and that the ceiling was made of flammable material and could catch fire.”
Earlier, in the case of a fire at Polygon, the owner of the club, deputy of the Kostroma Regional Duma from United Russia Ikhtiyar Mirzoev and Natalya Belenogova, the head of the Empire company, which organized the work of the establishment, were also arrested. Later they were both transferred to house arrest. Belenogova is charged with provision of services that do not meet security requirements , and Mirzoev — violation of fire safety requirements.
Baza, SHOT and “Verstka” claimed that Ionkin is a military man who came under fire in Ukraine in August 2022 while transporting ammunition with his colleagues. After treatment in the Astrakhan region, he went on long sick leave to Kostroma.