The court sentenced Nikita Zhuravel, a student from Volgograd, to 13.5 years in prison, who was accused of treason after the verdict in the case of burning the Koran.

The Volgograd Regional Court sentenced student Nikita Zhuravel to 13 and a half years in a maximum security colony in a case of high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code). This is reported by V1.ru.

Zhuravel was also sentenced to a year of restriction of freedom after the end of his real term. As V1.ru writes, taking into account the unserved sentence in the case of burning the Koran, the young man must spend 14 years in prison.

According to security officials, in the spring of 2023, the young man sent a Ukrainian intelligence representative video recordings of a train transporting military equipment. The criminal case of treason against Zhuravel became known in early October.

In February, a court in Chechnya sentenced the young man to three years and six months in prison under the article of insulting the feelings of believers and hooliganism motivated by religious hatred (Part 2 of Article 148 of the Criminal Code and Part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators , Zhuravel set fire to the Koran in Volgograd in early May 2023 “on instructions from the SBU” for a promised reward of 10 thousand rubles. The case materials were transferred to Chechnya for investigation. The student himself was sent to the Grozny pre-trial detention center.

In August 2023, Ramzan Kadyrov visited a Volgograd resident under arrest with his son Adam, who was 15 years old at that time. Kadyrov Jr. beat Zhuravel, and the head of Chechnya a month later posted a video of the beating on his Telegram channel with the caption: “He beat him and did the right thing.”

After this, Kadyrov awarded his son the title of Hero of Chechnya, and he also received state awards at various levels from leaders of other Russian regions. In addition, Adam was appointed head of a department in his father’s security service and “curator” of the Chechen battalion named after Sheikh Mansur, commanded by Ruslan Geremeev, a defendant in the Nemtsov murder case.