A Luxembourg cross-border worker held in a Russian jail since August has been refused a French interpreter on the first day of his trial on treason charges.
Mikhail Lochtchinine, also known as “Mike”, is a dual Belgian-Russian national who was detained during a trip to see his father in the summer. He was detained and accused of “financing a hostile state”, in reference to a transfer of money made in 2022 to a former Ukrainian girlfriend. For Moscow, this is enough to invoke article 275 of the Criminal Code: treason.
The first day of the trial in Pskov was a short session, Lochtchinine’s sister – who does not want to be named – told the Luxemburger Wort. “Only a few applications were examined and decided upon, after which the session was adjourned,” she said.
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In one of the applications submitted, Lochtchinine’s lawyer had requested a French interpreter for his client, who lives in Trier in Germany and works in Luxembourg. “Mike has spent almost his entire adult life in Western Europe,” explained his sister, “so the specific vocabulary of the Russian legal system is not always entirely clear to him.”
However, after some inquiries, the court rejected the application for an interpreter. The next hearing in the case is set to take place in exactly one week, on Friday 23 January.
(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Translated using AI, edited by John Monaghan.)