In the spring, the FSB detained a 21-year-old former contract soldier from the Kaliningrad region, who resigned from the army to avoid going to war. He is charged with articles on treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) and organizing sabotage (Part 4 of Article 281.1 of the Criminal Code). The secret service's press release was quoted today by RIA Novosti and Interfax , and Mediazona learned the details from its source familiar with the progress of the investigation.
The investigation claims that the detainee “established a relationship of confidential cooperation” with a representative of the Ukrainian special services and “for a monetary reward, he was looking for people who could commit arson at communications facilities and the transport infrastructure of the Russian Federation.” The FSB associates him with organizing 15 arson attacks from February to March 2023, in which he allegedly involved perpetrators in 15 regions. It is alleged that the security forces prevented five arson attacks by detaining ten perpetrators.
In addition, the security forces claim, “the fact of transferring information about a military unit located on the territory of the Kaliningrad region, in which the suspect previously served, to an employee of the special services of Ukraine, was documented.”
According to Mediazona’s interlocutor, the young man was detained eight months ago, although the FSB reported this only on December 7. After his arrest, he was placed in a pre-trial detention center and his period of detention was extended several times.
“About a year ago” the detainee retired from the army. “He served under a contract in one of the military units of the Kaliningrad region, when they started campaigning for you know what, he quit. I didn’t want to go,” the publication reports the words of its source. According to his information, the young man pleaded guilty to organizing sabotage, but not to treason. Perhaps the criminal case is a provocation by the FSB.
“He’s young, he’s doing well, he doesn’t regret anything,” the source added. Mediazona also spoke with a relative of the detainee. He noted that what the FSB said was not true, but did not comment on the case in more detail.
- Before the start of a full-scale war with Ukraine, people in Russia were rarely tried under the article on sabotage (Article 281 of the Criminal Code) - over the past ten years, courts have handed down several sentences a year, found out Mediazona . Since the fall of 2022, security forces began to regularly initiate criminal cases under this article: the publication’s journalists studied known materials and found that almost three-quarters of them refer to damage to relay cabinets on railways. In addition, at the end of 2022, the punishment for sabotage was tightened: related articles were introduced three new into the Criminal Code , one of which carries life imprisonment.
- As a rule, the details of criminal cases of sabotage are almost unknown - information about them is mainly disseminated by security forces. In addition to the article on sabotage, some defendants are also charged with an article on a terrorist attack (Article 205 of the Criminal Code) or its preparation. From the available data we can conclude that the initiation of cases under these articles is not always justified: not all cases carry serious consequences for the operation of the railway, and some are completely insignificant. In many cases, the accused said that they damaged relay cabinets and other equipment on the roads for little money . Moreover, in some cases it can be argued that arson was a way to oppose a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.