On 20 February, Chechnya’s Shatoy District Court sentenced Maksim Ponarin to life imprisonment in a penal colony. The man was accused of taking part in an attack on Russian troops in 2000, during the Second Chechen War.

Stavropol-native Ponarin, who converted to Islam and in 2000 and fought alongside Chechen militants Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, was found guilty of an ‘attempt on the life of military serviceman’. According to the press-service of the FSB in Stavropol Kray, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. In conjunction with other offences, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a penal colony.

Investigators claim that Ponarin was among the militants who took part in the attack on a detachment of Pskov paratroopers near the village of Ulus Kert in Chechnya in February 2000. More than 80 Russian soldiers were killed in the battle.

This is the 17th crime Ponarin has been convicted of. In 2007, the Moscow City Court sentenced him to 200 years in prison and one life sentence for his part in the 2004 bombing of the Rizhskaya Metro Station in Moscow. Two other Stavropol-natives, Tamby Khubiyev and Murat Shavayev, were sentenced to multiple life sentences and 250 years in prison under the same charges in 2007 and January 2017.