A court in Russia’s Moscow region has sentenced a journalist to seven years in prison for killing her abusive ex-partner in what she claimed was an act of self-defence, her son told independent news outlet Verstka on Monday.
A six-person jury in the city of Elektrostal found Oksana Goncharova, 47, guilty of premeditated murder for killing Alexey Samusyov with a pair of scissors in September 2022 after he turned up at her flat and began attacking her, her son Pyotr, 25, said.
Samusyov, with whom Goncharova had two younger children, subjected her to physical and emotional abuse for over 10 years, according to friends, who also described the police response to her reports of domestic violence as “half-hearted”.
Samusyov, who, according to business daily Kommersant, had previous convictions for grievous bodily harm, robbery and issuing death threats, showed up uninvited at Goncharova’s flat with a friend in late September 2022. The three drank together before she asked them to leave, at which point Samusyov began beating Goncharova and threatening her with scissors, Verstka said.
Goncharova then took the scissors from Samusyov and stabbed him with them. Samusyov, who was conscious when he left Goncharova’s flat, was taken to hospital, where he subsequently died.
Refusing to deem Goncharova’s actions as either “necessary self-defence”, which is not a crime under Russian law, or as “murder committed in excess of the limits of necessary self-defence”, which is punishable by up to two years in prison, the jury did however find her deserving of “leniency”, which meant her prison sentence could not exceed 10 years, Kommersant reported.
Goncharova, who previously worked for Russian business publications RBC and Vedomosti, felt her sentence was “unfair”, her lawyer Alexander Garanin told news outlet Gazeta.ru, and said that they would mount an appeal.
Russia does not have a separate law on domestic abuse and some forms of domestic violence were decriminalised in 2017, with a 2019 investigation by Novaya Gazeta finding that almost 80% of women convicted of murder or manslaughter in Russia were defending themselves against their partners. A June survey, however, indicated that 89% of Russians would be in favour of legislation banning it.