MOSCOW, June 4 (RAPSI) – A court in the Leningrad Region obliged Russia’s Defense Ministry to pay 4 million rubles (about $60,000) to the mother of a common soldier Andrey Vittikh, who had died from tank fire during army exercises because of the command officers’negligence, lawyer Dmitry Gerasimov told RAPSI on Thursday.

In September 2019, the Leningrad Regional Court ordered the Defense Ministry to pay 6 million rubles (about $90,000) in total to three other ex-soldiers, who had suffered from tank gun.

According to case papers, on September 7, 2017, four soldiers participated in the training as part of joint exercises of Russia and Belarus in an armor training battlefield in the Leningrad Region. A regular round killed a 20-year old soldier Andrey Vittikh; Dmitry Pakhmutov, Arsen Osmanov and Vadim Gabdullin were seriously injured.

In February 2019, two lieutenant colonels Denis Gorelyshev and Victor Krivoshein received a 3-year suspended sentence each for negligence with a 1-year probation after release.