Yury DMITRIEV’s lawyer Victor Anufriev has written to the chairman of the Supreme Court, Vyacheslav Lebedev, challenging the decision taken on 12 October [R] not to examine the appeal against his client’s sentence to 13 years imprisonment.

On 4 October Judge Sergei Abramov of the Panel for Criminal Cases [R] was assigned the 20 case files covering Dmitriev’s first and second trials and the appeal drawn up by Anufriev against the 29 September 2020 ruling of the Karelian High Court. “… having studied the cassation appeal,” the Supreme Court press service stated a week later, “the judge saw no grounds for agreeing with the arguments put forward in the appeal”. It would not be presented, therefore, for consideration by the full panel of judges.

After a cursory examination of only four working days this was an inadequate response, commentators noted, to the volume of evidence accumulated at the two trials and the thoroughly documented appeal submitted in June.