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A resident of Yalta was sentenced to 24 years in prison for attempting to assassinate former Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev

2025.03.11

He was charged with six articles of the Criminal Code, including "treason" and "attempt on the life of a public figure"

The Southern District Military Court sentenced 47-year-old Yalta resident Petr Zhitsky to 24 years in prison in the case of the attempted assassination of former Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine deputy Oleg Tsarev in annexed Crimea, "Mediazona"* reported from the court's press service. He will spend five years of the term in prison, the rest of the time in a strict regime colony. Additionally, Zhitsky was fined 800 thousand rubles.

Zhitsky was found guilty on six criminal charges: treason, undergoing training for terrorist activities, attempt on the life of a public figure, illegal circulation and manufacture of explosives by an organized group, and illegal circulation of firearms.

According to the prosecution, since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, "SBU officers created a stable group of individuals, uniting in advance to commit crimes in Crimea," including the attempted assassination of Oleg Tsarev, who became the speaker of the "Novorossiya parliament" after 2014.

It is alleged that Zhitsky established contact with an SBU officer and began passing information to him. In November 2022, he received the coordinates of a cache and retrieved "tools and means for committing the planned crime" from it.

He brought the firearms and explosives to his home, where he made an explosive device. From December to October, Zhitsky observed Tsarev, and in May-June, "determined a possible place for the attempt on his life."

In December 2023, the FSB reported the arrest of 18 people in Crimea on suspicion of organizing attempts on the Russian-appointed head of the peninsula Sergey Aksenov, local parliament speaker Vladimir Konstantinov, blogger-informer Alexander Talipov, and Tsarev. An attack on the latter took place in the fall on the territory of the Kirov sanatorium in Yalta, and he survived. The FSB claimed that Zhitsky confessed.

In Kyiv, Tsarev was sentenced in absentia to 12 years in a colony for attempting to violate the territorial integrity of the country and calling for the overthrow of the government.

* Recognized as a "foreign agent" in Russia.

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