Russian man gets 20 years for killing military police officer who tried to detain his deserter son

A Russian court has handed down a twenty-year sentence to a man who shot and killed a military police officer sent to detain his deserter son. Meduza reports that sixty-three-year-old Alexey Zaitsev was convicted by the Lipetsk Regional Court of assaulting the life of a law enforcement officer, illegally possessing explosives and ammunition, and threatening a government official. The officers had come to arrest his thirty-five-year-old son, who had gone AWOL after more than a year of contract service. According to the account, after a confrontation outside the home, Zaitsev grabbed a hunting rifle and shot a sergeant in the back as the officers walked to their car; the wounded officer died. Zaitsev, who has admitted guilt, will serve his first three years in prison and the rest in a strict-regime colony, and was ordered to pay two million rubles to the dead officer's underage son.

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