Dmitry Buchenkov. Source: Autonomous Action. Dmitry Buchenkov has spent one and a half years in a Moscow detention facility. The 39-year-old, who holds a PhD in political science and worked as a research fellow at the Russian National Research Medical University prior to his detention, stands accused of participating in mass riots and assaulting police officers during the May 2012 protest rally on Bolotnaya Square. The Zamoskvoretsky District Court is currently considering his case, with Buchenkov himself having been under house arrest since March 2017. The left-wing activist’s pre-trial restrictions have been changed after Ildar Dadin, a fellow political prisoner, was pardoned in December 2016 — a development that has spurred talk of a “managed thaw” and a change in tactics on the part of the regime ahead of the presidential elections.
In Buchenkov’s case, however, this step can hardly be called a thaw. On the day of the protests, the defendant was not in Moscow at all: he’d gone to Nizhny Novgorod to spend the weekend with his parents, as corroborated by relatives’ testimony and data from the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate. The case against Buchenkov has been constructed using testimony from secret witnesses and police officers passing themselves off as victims of violence on the square. The case rests predominantly on photographs and video footage featuring a black-sweatered man with an alleged resemblance to Buchenkov. Although an independent evaluation has refuted the investigators’ argument that this man is Buchenkov, the trial of the activist continues.
I interviewed Buchenkov during his imprisonment.
