MOSCOW, August 6 (RAPSI) – Moscow’s Lyublinsky District Court on Thursday found activists of the New Greatness (“Novoe Velichie”) movement guilty of organizing an extremist community, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

The court found that Anna Pavlikova, Maria Dubovik, Dmitry Poletayev, Maxim Roshchin, Ruslan Kostylenkov, Vyacheslav Kryukov and Petr Karamzin created the community for a violent upheaval.

Prosecutors earlier asked the court to sentence alleged leader of the extremist movement Kostylenkov to 7.5 years in penal colony; Karamzin and Kryukov to 6.5 and 6 years behind bars respectively. Suspended terms were demanded for other defendants.

Alleged activists of the extremist movement were arrested in March 2018. Investigators stated that the defendants followed far-right ideas and that their leader claimed that he planned to establish a new order in Russia.

The New Greatness case became a subject of public controversy because the defense has information that the movement itself was organized by a law enforcement officer.