The accused in the acid attack on the Bolshoi Ballet chief, dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, denied he had ordered to inflict harm upon Sergey Filin. If found guilty, Dmitrichenko faces up to 12 years behind bars.
The suspect’s lawyer indicated that his client acknowledges “the factual guilt in committing the crime,” but is outraged by the media claims that he ordered to attack the Bolshoi Ballet chief with acid.
Pavel Dmitrichenko assured investigators that he had only
ordered a beating for Filin, and the acid attack wasn’t his
idea.
“I would like to say that I didn’t order to inflict harm upon
[Filin],” he told investigators. “Yes, I masterminded the
crime, but not to the extent to which it happened,” the dancer
indicated.
Two days ago, however, Dmitrichenko, one of the leading Bolshoi
Theater dancers, confessed to police that he masterminded the acid
attack on Sergey Filin, the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic
director.
Two other alleged participants of the assault were also detained, and admitted to their participation in the crime.
On Thursday Dmitrichenko was formally charged and faces up to 12
years in prison if found guilty.
Despite Dmitrichenko admitting to having commissioned the crime,
some of his colleagues remain unsure about who and what actually
triggered the conflict, and the acid attack that followed.
“Dmitrichenko is an honest and open person! For example, when he
had a conflict with a critic from Kommersant newspaper because of
her bad review of ‘Ivan the Terrible’, he acted frankly in the
comments to the article, and signed all he said, ‘Pavel
Dmitrichenko’. I don’t believe it! It’s hard for me to believe!
We’ve worked so long in one company. I don’t know a single case of
him offending any of his colleagues! There were, of course,
disputes, but those were only in-house spats,” a source at the
Bolshoi Theater told Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK) newspaper.
Choreographer Mikhail Lavrovsky observed in an interview with
Vesti-FM radio, “The Bolshoi Theater is all Secrets of the
Spanish Court. But I don’t think that he, a grown-up man, would do
it.”
Some of the dancer’s colleagues told Vechernyaya Moskva
newspaper that someone may have pushed Dmitrichenko to order the
crime: “Pasha [short for Pavel in Russian] is a very special
person: stubborn, sympathetic, quick-tempered, even explosive. But
we couldn’t even think that it would end with such a
tragedy…Dmitrichenko was instigated to commit the crime against
Filin.”
The motive cited behind the crime by various Russian media
outlets is the young ballet dancer Anzhelina Vorontsova, who was allegedly
not favored by Filin, being married to Dmitrichenko by habit and
repute. Police, nevertheless, name the motive as ‘personal enmity’
of the dancer towards the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic
director.
On January 17, Sergey Filin, was attacked by a masked assailant who splashed acid in his face. The director, who suffered third-degree burns to his face, had to undergo several plastic and eye surgeries and is presently undergoing continued treatment in Germany.