Legal Case of the Week: Yury Kuly

On 18 May 2017, Yury Kuly, an actor who had been detained at an anti-corruption rally in Moscow on 26 March 2017, was sent to prison for eight months. As The Moscow Times reports, Yury Kuly "is the first demonstrator to face the court after the protest, which saw more than 1,000 people detained by police in Moscow alone." The demonstration, which had been called by anti-corruption campaigner and opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, had not been given official permission. Kuly was charged with assaulting a member of Russia's National Guard, an offence for which the prosecutors had asked for a two-year prison term. According to the The Moscow Times, Kuly had pleaded guilty to the charges in the hope of receiving a suspended sentence. The lawyer representing Yury Kuly, Aleksei Lipster, is reported by The Moscow Times as saying that Kuly maintains he "had grabbed the officer's hand in a bid to protect an elderly man from the riot police."

Earlier, the news webiste Mediazona reported that one of two witnesses who had given testimony in court against Yury Kuly was Aleksei Petrunko, an activist with a pro-Kremlin radical group, "who is suspected for attacking oppositionist leader Alexei Navalny with a brilliant green dye solution."

Three other defendants have been charged with attacking law enforcement officers during the anti-corruption protest in Moscow on 26 March 26.