 At the end of November 2017, the Russian daily broadsheet "Izvestia" reported that Andrija Mandić and Milan Knežević had sent a letter to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, saying Kadyrov had figured in the indictment starting from the previous week and requesting Russia's support.The defence sought to question the credibility and psychiatric competence of the prosecutor's witness.In early June 2018, the court in Podgorica heard evidence from Brian Scott, a former CIA operative and the chief executive officer of a U.S. risk-management company Patriot Defense Group