Russia on Monday sentenced a man to 25 years in jail for planning to set fire to a military enlistment office in Siberia in 2022, the year Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine.
Russia saw a wave of arson attacks on army offices after the Kremlin announced an unpopular military mobilisation drive in September 2022.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
A military court in the city of Novosibirsk handed down the sentence to Ilya Baburin, accusing him of seeking to help the Azov battalion, a branch of the Ukrainian military branded a terror organisation in Russia.
Rights groups have called it a record sentence and stressed that the arson never happened.
The court said Baburin had "created a plan to set the military commissariat in Novosibirsk on fire".
It said he had recruited somebody to throw a Molotov cocktail at the army office but the unnamed person instead reported him to the FSB security service.
It alledged that he was acting on Ukrainian orders and that he had "established contact" with members of the Azov battalion.
The TASS news agency published footage of Baburin in court, wearing a tracksuit and smiling inside a glass cage for defendants.
"I did not set anything on fire," Baburin said in court, according to the independent Dozhd TV channel.
He accused the FSB of trying to "gain points" during Moscow's Ukraine campaign and of "investigating absurd crimes."
Baburin, who was arrested in September 2022, was found guilty of a string of offences, including "terrorism" and "treason".
Ukrainian Drones Strike Missile Arsenal in Russia’s Novgorod Region, Oil Depot in Samara Region
His lawyer Vasily Dubkov argued in court earlier this month that "nobody was harmed", according to a transcript of a statement delivered in court and published by the Perviy Otdel rights group.
"Baburin does not look like a spy giving out state secrets and did not have or hand out state secrets,"Dubkov said.
You can also highlight the text and press Ctrl + Enter
