Novotroitsk man's treason sentence upheld on appeal

The verdict of the Central District Military Court against a 28-year-old resident of Novotroitsk has come into force. He was convicted on a number of serious charges, including preparation for high treason, terrorism, and participation in the activities of a terrorist organization (Part 1 of Article 30 and Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

As reported by the press service of the regional FSB, the Novotroitsk resident, who worked as a merchandiser-cashier at a local pawnshop and found himself in the dock, very much wanted to leave Russia and join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

He himself contacted a Ukrainian militarized terrorist organization (we will not specify the name) and asked for help with relocation. To confirm his intentions, the man agreed to be an anonymous propagandist and discredit the Russian Armed Forces, and was also not opposed to much more serious matters. And he was supervised and communicated with by a certain person named Semyon.

In May 2023, the Novotroitsk resident was detained: according to available information, he not only posted leaflets calling on Russian military personnel to surrender to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but was indeed preparing for terrorist acts.

He learned from online videos how to make an incendiary mixture and planned to set fire to the military commissariat and the FSB department in Orsk, as well as sabotage on one of the railways in his hometown—setting fire to a relay cabinet near Sovetskaya Street (which is what such convicts often do, as 56.RU has repeatedly reported).

The curator told him that it is along these routes that military personnel travel, and the «cocktails» that the caught man himself expressed a desire to make need to be assembled in the forest—all of this is in screenshots of the correspondence.

By the time the handcuffs clicked on the young man«s wrists, nothing had been deleted from his phone»s memory, and from a cache near Uralnaya Street, law enforcement officers retrieved a shovel, binoculars, and components for future explosives (bottles, a crowbar, bags with chemical substances), so there was little doubt that the detainee faced a serious sentence.

In early February last year, the Central District Military Court found him guilty and sentenced him to 20 years in prison (with the first 5 years in a prison, and the remaining term in a strict-regime colony).

The convict appealed this verdict, but the Military Court of Appeal left the sentence unchanged—it has come into legal force.