Evgenii Marchenko

He was born in the Volgograd region and lived in Syktyvkar. He was convicted twice for driving while drunk. In December 2024, he was sentenced to five years for possession and attempted sale of drugs. While he was in captivity, a case of public justification of terrorism was initiated against him because, according to the investigation, while in the pre-trial detention centre, he approved of the hostage-taking in colony No. 19 in the Volgograd region. Marchenko said in court that he had been “deliberately provoked” for such a conversation. It follows from the case file that the staff of the pre-trial detention centre gave Marchenko’s cellmate a tape recorder to record his conversations. At the same time, none of the witnesses questioned by the investigation, except for the one who had the tape recorder, confirmed that Marchenko had approved of the hostage-taking in the colony. One of them, as Mediazona notes, did not recognise the voice attributed to him on the recording. On 29 September 2025, Marchenko was sentenced to five years in a strict regime colony.