The Lipetsk Regional Court sentenced Alexei Zaitsev, 63, a resident of the village of Shcherbinino, to 20 years in prison. He was found guilty of attempting to kill a law enforcement officer, illegal possession of explosives and ammunition, and threatening violence against a government official.
Zaitsev will serve the first three years in prison and the remainder in a strict-regime penal colony. The court also ordered him to pay a 40,000-ruble fine and 2 million rubles in moral damages to the minor son of the deceased officer.
The incident occurred on March 19. Military police officers came to Zaitsev's home to detain his 35-year-old son, who had fled his military unit after 18 months of contract service. According to the court, Zaitsev's son first emerged from the house carrying a hunting rifle, then handed the weapon to his father. Zaitsev began threatening the officers, who retreated toward their vehicle, at which point he shot one of them in the back. The wounded sergeant died at the scene. A second officer detained Zaitsev while he was reloading the rifle.
The newspaper Kommersant reported a different sequence: according to the outlet, the officers first subdued Zaitsev, who was resisting unarmed, and only then did his son come out of the house with the rifle, demanding that his father be released. After being freed, the elder Zaitsev took the rifle and shot one of the officers in the back.
Police found gunpowder and ammunition in Zaitsev's home. He pleaded guilty. During his arrest, he told a reporter from Gorod48 that his son “honestly served a year and a half under contract and returned home, but he was pursued and strongly advised to return to service.”
A former neighbor told Mediazona that after his wife's death, Zaitsev became “unsociable” and stopped leaving the remote village. When extending his pretrial detention, the court noted that Zaitsev “is not employed and has no stable social or family ties.”
Zaitsev's son was sentenced in late June to eight years in a strict-regime colony on charges of desertion and resisting a superior during a period of mobilization.