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The Severobaikalsk City Court has replaced Valery Patyuk’s sentence of compulsory labour for a case involving violence against bailiffs who beat him (part 3 of article 296 of the Criminal Code) with a term in a penal settlement. Patyuk himself reported this to OVD-Info.
He was taken into custody at the start of September and subsequently transferred to Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia in eastern Siberia. “In the end, while in the Ulan-Ude remand centre, I was subjected to severe moral and psychological pressure, which forced me to sign a contract for the ‘special military operation,’” Patyuk said. He emphasised that the decision was not made voluntarily. “In fact, I was forced to sign this contract. I don’t know if I’ll be able to contact you again, or how long I have left to live in this world… I don’t want to take part in this fratricidal war, as I have relatives in Ukraine. But I was left with no choice…,” he added.
Patyuk told OVD-Info that on 31 July 2024, bailiffs came to his home to carry out a compulsory conveyance. The bailiffs forcibly dragged him outside without any shoes, beat him and broke his elbow joint; he explained that he responded in self-defence.
According to an expert’s testimony from the case files, bailiffs Bolotov and Dmitriyev had bruises on their hands—according to their statements, Patyuk grabbed their hands. Furthermore, Bolotov and Dmitriyev, who were recognised as victims, claim that Patyuk also hit them with his hands and feet. Medical professionals did not find traces of these blows, but the expert noted that in such cases “bodily injuries may not be visible.”
For his part, the blogger was found to have, in addition to the fractured elbow joint, bruises on his head, back, neck, arms and legs. The expert concluded that these had occurred “as a result of at least 13 impacts from a blunt hard object.” The Investigative Committee refused to open a criminal case against the bailiffs.
- The debt for which enforcement proceedings were initiated amounted to 30,000 roubles (about US$325) and was related to a conflict between Patyuk and fitness trainer and LDPR municipal councillor Vitaly Zhdanov. In December 2023, the Severobaikalsk City Court granted a claim by Zhdanov in connection with Patyuk’s video ‘There Was an Attempted Attack on Me by a Fitness Trainer and His Friends from the Boxing Club’, and ordered Patyuk to compensate Zhdanov for moral damages. The blogger suggests that the harsh compulsory conveyance may have been an attempt to pressure him because of his political activity.
- Previously, Patyuk was given a suspended sentence of three-and-a-half years on charges of incitement to extremism (Article 280 of the Criminal Code) and incitement to hatred (Article 282 of the Criminal Code). In 2018, he was added to the Rosfinmonitoring list of extremists. In 2020, he wrote in his blog on Dzen that the case was linked to emotional statements he made about the Russian authorities amid a row with comedian Danila Poperechny, as well as articles “mainly dedicated to the subject of the Jewish question in Russia.”