A Russian court has sentenced a man who took part in an antigovernment protest on March 26 to four years in prison.
The Tver district court in Moscow on August 9 found Andrei Kosykh guilty of causing bodily harm to two law enforcement officers and sentenced him the same day.
Anticorruption rallies held in Moscow and about 100 other cities across Russia on March 26 were among the largest protests against President Vladimir Putin’s government since a wave of demonstrations in 2011-12. Many were held without government permission.
Police detained more than 1,000 people in Moscow alone including Aleksei Navalny, the Putin foe and anticorrupion crusader who called for the protests,
Kosykh, who pleaded guilty, is the fourth participant in the Moscow protest to be was convicted.
He and six other people — Yury Kuly, Dmitry Borisov, Aleksei Politikov, Aleksandr Shpakov, Dmitry Krepkin, and Stanislav Zimovets — were arrested on suspicion of attacking police officers at the rally.
In July, Zimovets was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in a so-called colony settlement — a penitentiary in which convicts live close to an industrial facility or a farm where they work.
In May, Kuly was sentenced to eight months in a colony settlement and Shpakov was sentenced to 18 months in prison.