"The court hereby rules to uphold the verdict of Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court against Igor Podporin and reject the defense team’s complaint," the judge said. Therefore, the verdict has entered into force.

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. The Moscow City Court has rejected the defense team’s complaint against the conviction of Igor Podporin sentenced to two years and six months behind bars for damaging Ilya Repin’s painting "Ivan The Terrible And His Son Ivan On November 16, 1581" at Moscow’s Tretyakov Art Gallery, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom.

On April 30, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court sentenced Podporin to a prison term of two years and six months. The man will receive credit for 11 months, which he had spent in custody and will serve less than a year behind bars.

The painting depicting Ivan the Terrible, grief-stricken and cradling his dying son, was damaged just before the gallery closed on May 25, 2018. Police arriving on the scene detained the perpetrator, who had smashed the glass protecting the painting with a metal poll, damaging the canvas. The culprit claimed that he damaged the painting as it ran counter to established historical facts.

The gallery said the painting was badly damaged. The canvas was ripped in three places in the central section, while shards of glass that shattered in the attack damaged the frame as well. Experts estimated the damage to the painting with the price tag of 720 mln rubles ($11 mln) at 30 mln rubles ($465,600).