Stavropol bikers sentenced to seven years as third defendant dies after alleged torture
Two defendants in the ‘Stavropol bikers’ case have been sentenced to seven years each in a penal colony, following allegations of a plot to firebomb a military recruitment office in Pyatigorsk.
The sentences, reported by Mediazona, were handed down to Sergei Dudchenko and Nikolai Murnev. For Sergei Dudchenko, the term will be served consecutively with a previous conviction, bringing his total time behind bars to 10 years. A third defendant, Kirill Buzmakov, died in July 2024 after suffering what reports describe as the catastrophic physical effects of torture.
The men belonged to ‘1%’, a private chat group of eight members where sympathies for Ukraine were occasionally voiced. Of that group, four were accused of involvement in the arson plot: Sergei Dudchenko, Nikolai Murnev, Kirill Buzmakov, and Vladimir Burmay, the latter of whom fled Russia before he could be charged.
The security services launched their crackdown in October 2022. Sergei Dudchenko and Kirill Buzmakov were seized on the 8th, followed by Nikolai Murnev on the 12th. All were initially held under administrative arrest on various pretexts.
Sergei Dudchenko’s legal ordeal began with a charge of large-scale drug possession. Police claimed to have discovered illicit substances in his pocket during his arrest. This was followed by a slew of further allegations, including the illegal possession of explosives, detonators, and ammunition, and the unlawful transfer of a hunting rifle. Prosecutors alleged that a search unearthed a cache of grenades and cartridges. Sergei Dudchenko denied every charge, maintaining that the evidence had been planted. In 2024, he was sentenced to seven and a half years for these offences.
Kirill Buzmakov was charged with the illegal possession of rifle cartridges and, in 2023, received a three-year sentence in a settlement colony. Nikolai Murnev was similarly accused of drug offences. Investigators claimed he had been spotted picking up a cellophane-wrapped package from the ground before supposedly drawing police attention by shouting obscenities. He was given a three-year suspended sentence for that charge.
Parallel to these proceedings, the FSB initiated a separate terrorism case, alleging the group had conspired to commit a terrorist act.
All three men gave harrowing accounts of state-sanctioned violence. Sergei Dudchenko testified to being beaten and suffocated with a plastic bag immediately following his arrest, then subjected to electric shocks the next day. Nikolai Murnev’s wife described seeing her husband a month later covered in bruises and scars. Nikolai himself recounted being tortured with electricity and admitted to an attempted suicide while in custody. Vladimir Burmay told Mediazona that a photograph of Murnev showed his face as ‘one battered mass’, with no uninjured skin visible.
Kirill Buzmakov’s treatment was particularly clinical in its cruelty. His facial bone was broken during his arrest, an injury that reportedly went untreated despite promises of medical care in exchange for a confession. A tumour eventually developed at the site of the fracture. He reported being beaten, forced to his knees, and subjected to a mock execution at gunpoint.
By the time he was released under house arrest in May 2024, his condition was terminal. Following surgery in a civilian hospital, he wrote to Vladimir Burmay: ‘They removed my jaw completely. I breathe through a tracheostomy and am fed through a tube. I will probably survive.’
Kirill Buzmakov died on 20 July 2024.
