A Saratov man who set fire to a communications tower because of “telephone waves” had his sentence changed from 3.5 years in a penal colony to 10 years in a strict regime prison.

Three judges of the Military Court of Appeal, at the request of the prosecutor's office, changed the sentence of 48-year-old resident of the city of Balashov Eduard Markov, who set fire to a communications tower, from 3.5 years in a penal colony to 10 years in a maximum security colony. Mediazona became aware of this.

In January, the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg sentenced Markov to 3.5 years in a penal colony instead of the 12 years of maximum security requested by the prosecutor.

Initially, the man was accused of committing a terrorist attack, but judge Igor Solomko found that Markov was guilty only of attempted damage to property. According to Markov’s lawyer Grigory Selentsov, there was no evidence in the case that Markov acted on someone else’s instructions or for money, which the court took into account .

In a written appeal, prosecutor Dmitry Komissarov called this punishment too lenient and asked to send the case for review. Military prosecutor Andrei Obukhov, who spoke in court, asked to reclassify the charge as attempted terrorist attack and sentence Markov to 11 years of strict regime. He proved Markov’s motive by the fact that opposition content he had viewed was found on his phone.

Markov himself said in his last word that he regretted his actions, loved his country and wanted to go “to the Northern Military District.”

On the night of December 23, 2024, Markov drunkenly threw three Molotov cocktails into the MTS communications tower. The prosecutor's office insisted in court that he “maintained an extremely negative attitude towards the current government and the military action carried out on the territory of Ukraine,” and his goal was to cause fear and endanger people living near the communications tower.

In the court of first instance, Markov said that he only wanted to disable the tower, and not set it on fire. He was sure that “telephone waves” had a “negative effect on the human body.” According to his wife, Markov was sure that he had “undermined his health due to the waves that the tower emitted,” and even went to the clinic and said that he was dizzy and nauseous. Doctors did not find any physiological reasons for this condition.

The MTS company, which owns the communications tower, had no complaints against Markov: when the tower was set on fire, the paint was only slightly burned, and it did not cause any material damage. The prosecutor, asking for a time limit, agreed that there was no damage, but noted that if Markov had nevertheless destroyed the communication tower, the damage could have amounted to up to 918 thousand rubles.