The Krasnodar Regional Court registered a criminal case against Anapa resident Dmitry Polunin — he is accused of confidential cooperation with a foreign organization (Article 275.1 of the Criminal Code). Mediazona drew attention to the case file.
The details of the prosecution of Polunin under Article 275.1 of the Criminal Code are unknown.
Previously, before his formal arrest in a criminal case, Dmitry Polunin spent almost six months under administrative arrest. According to Mediazona, this is a record in the practice of cyclical arrests, which security forces use to keep in isolation those against whom they are collecting materials for a criminal case.
For the first time, Polunin appeared before a judge of the Anapa District Court on the afternoon of September 22, 2023. “Near the home <…> refused to provide identification documents and tried to escape,” the police report says. The man allegedly admitted his guilt and was sentenced to a maximum of 15 days of administrative arrest under the article on failure to comply with police demands (19.3 of the Administrative Code).
As soon as he left the special detention center on October 7, the police decided that he “screamed loudly, used crude obscene language, did not respond to comments from passers-by, and tried to start a fight,” and again drew up a report — this time on petty hooliganism (Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code). He was again given 15 days.
After two arrests in Anapa, Polunin was transported to Novorossiysk, where he allegedly tried to escape from the police in the middle of the night while drunk — twice. This was followed by two arrests for 15 and 10 days in Slavyansk-on-Kuban. Moreover, at the second of them, Polunin said for the first time in court (more precisely, this was reflected in the resolution for the first time) that he did not consider himself guilty and “repented of speaking out against the military special operation in Ukraine.” This is the first indication of why Polunin has in fact been kept under arrest since September.
Next, the police took Polunin to Krymsk, Tikhoretsk (where Polunin again began to plead guilty to petty hooliganism), the village of Vyselki and, finally, the village of Dinskaya. On January 30, 2024, judge Vyacheslav Pogorelov sentenced him to 10 days of arrest — this is the last known decision on administrative cases against Polunin.
In total, Polunin spent 140 days in special detention centers or police departments (ten administrative arrests) and only after that, apparently, a criminal case was formally opened against him for cooperation with a foreign organization.
p>Moreover, in the very first decision to arrest Polunin it is said that even before that, he had already been arrested for disobedience to the police within a year. Mediazona was unable to find such a protocol card in Russian courts, but this may mean that Polunin spent even more time under arrest.