The Novgorod Case was a criminal case in Russia from 2007 to 2024, notable both for its public resonance in 2007-2008 and for the length of time during which the defendant and the presumed victim (mother and daughter) were wanted, found alive after having disappeared for 15 years.
The case involved Antonina Martynova (formerly Fyodorova, née Stepanova) from Veliky Novgorod, born in 1985. She was charged with attempted murder while trying to murder her then 2-year-old daughter, Alisa, in February 2007, by throwing her into the stairwell. The sole witness was an 11-year-old boy. Antonina and her defence have claimed that the girl fell by accident.
Antonina was prosecuted under Articles 30.3 ("Preparations for a Crime, and Attempted Crimes") and 105.2 ("Murder") of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (CC-RF). (CC-RF henceforth; these links and other Code(s) links below are for the English translation(s) of the latest versions of the Code(s), those currently in force in Russia).
The case sparked extensive public debate in Russian media, online communities, and blogs, with a large-scale campaign in support of Antonina's innocence. Discussions began in April 2007 with a post on the Russian-language blog of Antonina's domestic partner (later her second husband), Kirill Martynov (LiveJournal user "hvil").
In July 2008 a closed trial was held, at which a panel of jurors found the defendant guilty. However, Martynova–Fyodorova failed to appear at the next hearing where she was expected to be sentenced and incarcerated, disappeared together with her daughter, and remained on the wanted list for 15 years and 8 months.
In the spring of 2024 Antonina Martynova was detained by police in Stavropol. Her daughter Alisa, by then aged 19, had been living with her, and later testified in her defence. The proceedings resumed from the same stage at which they had been interrupted 15 years earlier.
On 7 May 2024 the Novgorod Regional Court found Martynova guilty and sentenced her to nine years’ imprisonment. On 19 September of the same year, the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction reduced the sentence to eight years and replaced the actual prison term with a suspended sentence (with a probation period of four years), releasing Antonina (who had by then divorced her second husband and reverted to the surname Fyodorova) from custody.
Background The term "Novgorod Case" was first used by the Russian news agency REGNUM on April 20, 2007. The main events of the case took place in the city of Veliky Novgorod, Russia.
Antonina, 22 and temporarily unemployed, was taking care of her daughter, Alisa, born in 2004 to Antonina's first marriage. Her husband, Kirill Martynov, is a journalist and was at the time, a lecturer of Philosophy at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Until mid-August 2007, the investigation was conducted by the Major Case Investigator Vladimir Vladimirovich Kolodkin, of Veliky Novgorod (MCI or MCI Kolodkin henceforth).
Timeline 2007
On February 26, Alisa fell down two floors of a stairwell in the building where her grandmother lives, in Veliky Novgorod. An 11-year-old boy, a friend of a neighbor's son, witnessed the fall. The boy allegedly stood on the landing one floor above. He reported to the neighbors that he had seen "an older girl push a younger one down". Antonina claims it was an accident.
See versions of the events as seen by the prosecution and the defense below.
The mother and daughter were rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. A medical examination revealed that Alisa sustained a concussion and some damage to her jaw, lost four teeth and had minor bruises. During the examination, the police had Antonina make a written testimony of the events.
On March 16, Antonina was visited by a police officer who brought her an official summons to testify as a witness in an inquiry into Alisa's fall. According to Kirill, the officer also said that Antonina's actions constitute a corpus delicti under Article 105 of CC-RF ("Murder").New Left
On March 18, Antonina's defence was taken up by Konstantin Pakin. According to Kirill, Pakin only agreed to take the case on strict non-disclosure terms and intimated he would drop it immediately if it were to attract too much public attention. On March 19, the MCI Kolodkin took the testimony of Antonina and Antonina underwent an independent polygraph ("lie detector") test on March 20 on the advice of Pakin.
On March 22, the MCI officially opened a criminal investigation under Articles 30.3 ("Intentional actions (inaction) by the person concerned, directed expressly towards the commission of a crime") and 105.1 ("Murder") of CC-RF.
On March 23, a member of the Public Chamber of Russian Federation, Aleksey Chadayev, filed an official request with the Office of the Novgorod City Public Prosecutor, for the attention of Novgorod City Prosecutor Andrey Yefimov. In the request, Chadayev demanded that all those case materials not covered by official investigation secretly be delivered to the Public Chamber Committee on Relations with Regions and Police Authorities.
On March 26, the President of the Union of Writers of Russia, Valery Ganichev, wrote a letter to the Governor of the Novgorod Region, Mikhail Prusak. The letter stated that Antonina and Kirill have a healthy relationship and asked the governor to pay special attention to the case. Ganichev subsequently received a reply from the Novgorod City Hall that his letter had been forwarded to the Office of the Novgorod City Public Prosecutor.
On March 27, the MCI filed a request with the Novgorod Office of Children's Services demanding that "the child be taken away with immediate effect under Article 77 of the Family Code of Russia", attaching a copy of the case-opening decision to the said request. According to Kirill Martynov, he then called the Office of Children's Services personally and said the following: "Fyodorova has confessed to the attempted murder of her daughter. Take the child away." The same day, Pakin dropped the case because the involvement of the Public Chamber made it public.
According to an anonymous source in the Office of the Novgorod City Public Prosecutor quoted by A. Letyagin, a journalist, "that same day the girl was taken from her mother by the Office of Children's Services and delivered to her other relatives". Kirill Martynov denied that the said event ever took place.
On March 30, the Office of Children's Services received the MCI's request and attempted to take Alisa away without having procured either a court decision or a decision by the city authorities.
On April 6, Antonina received an official summons to appear at the Office of the Novgorod City Public Prosecutor on April 9. The same day, Vladimir Baydyuk, another investigator turned lawyer, dropped the case, declaring that Antonina's guilt is, as he sees it, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Kirill and Antonina then found a new lawyer, who agreed to take on the case.
On April 9, Antonina appeared at the Office of the Novgorod City Public Prosecutor to testify . According to Kirill Martynov, the interrogators "threatened" her with changing the CC-RF article under which she was to be prosecuted from the original Article 105.1 to Article 105.2, calling the latter "a death penalty article".
On April 13, Antonina signed a written agreement not to leave the City of Novgorod.
On April 18, Antonina was subjected to a complex psychological and psychiatric examination, conducted by psychiatrists and an expert psychologist of the Regional Psychoneurological Clinic of Novgorod. The examination decision was that Antonina does not suffer from any kind of psychological disorder now, nor did she suffer from any during the events leading to her being prosecuted.
On April 19, officials presented Antonina with the charges under Article 30.3 and Article 105.2, item c) ("Murder of a person who is known by the killer to be in a helpless state") of the CC-RF.
At 4:30 PM on the same day, the Novgorod City Court issued an official decision for the measure of restriction as incarceration. The MCI motivated his incarceration request by writing that Antonina "is charged with an especially grave crime, is currently unemployed, is constantly in contact with her underage daughter, and is living on the same premises with her, so that she is in position to commit other acts of violence involving her child. Furthermore, the gravity of the charges is such that one can reasonably suspect the accused of an intent to escape from the authorities and thus to obstruct the justice".
However, the Article 108 ("Taking into custody") of the Criminal Procedure Code of Russia stipulates that incarceration is only to be chosen as a measure of restriction "if it is impossible to apply a different, milder measure of restriction". Antonina was arrested the same day.
In the evening, Kirill Martynov published the first public notice about the case in his LiveJournal blog.
On April 20, comments in Kirill's blog and the blogs of his family friends hit the top list of the Russian search engine Yandex, which enumerates the most popular Russian blog posts based on the number of links given to these posts in other people's blogs.
That same day, Regnum, a Russian news agency, used the phrase "Novgorod case", referring to the case in question, for the first time in the history of the case.
A LiveJournal community called novgorod_delo was created. A popular journalist, TV personality and blogger Maxim Kononenko stopped running his political anecdote blog. Kononenko replaced the usual messages on the blog with information about the case. Many other public figures published their comments on the case online.
The defence filed a complaint against Antonina's incarceration at the Novgorod Regional Court under Article 108.11 (right to appeal decisions on selection of measures of restriction) of the Criminal Procedure Code of Russia. The court hearing of the complaint took place on May 8 (see below).
On April 21, the NTV channel aired a feature called "Particularly dangerous" on organized crime in Novgorod and its connections to the administration of Novgorod Region. This broadcast initiated a discussion of the issue "Novgorod is Russia's national preserve for crime" as part of Antonina's defence campaign.
On April 22, a Novgorod City Duma deputy, Aleksandr Deyna, sent a request for information to the Novgorod City Prosecutor Yefimov.
The same day, news about Antonina's arrest began to appear in various online media and other news agencies; the headlines were often misleading, stating that the mother attempted to kill the child. Kirill asked many of his journalist colleagues to replace the existing headlines with neutral ones. In some cases, he threatened journalists with lawsuits against them. Some members of novgorod_delo community also monitored news about the case.
On April 23, Yegor Kholmogorov appeared on Radio Mayak with a report on the case. On the same day, National News Agency published an article by Aleksey Koryakov, a journalist. Koryakov supported the point of view of the prosecution and accused the LiveJournal community of "attempts to pressure the jury".
On April 24, a Russian State Duma deputy A.V. Chuyev was presented with a letter describing the case. The defence signed a contract with a new lawyer, Konstantin Rybalov.
On April 25, an official reply of MCI Kolodkin to the deputy Deyna's request for information arrived in the mail. The New Novgorod Newspaper published a page-size article by Aleksey Koryakov which, again, supported in every detail the point of view of the prosecution. Later, Koryakov apologized to Antonina and published another article.