MOSCOW: Russian authorities in the central city of Kurgan have handed down a five-year prison sentence to a 20-year-old student, accusing him of collaborating with Ukrainian special services and planning sabotage attacks on military bases.
The announcement comes amid a series of arrests in Russia involving individuals accused of working with Kyiv or plotting attacks on army infrastructure since the commencement of full-scale hostilities in Ukraine in February 2022.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) branch in Kurgan revealed that the defendant had been initially detained on suspicion of working with a foreign state.
According to the FSB statement distributed to Russian news agencies, the student allegedly planned acts of sabotage targeting military and social infrastructure facilities. The security services further claimed that the unnamed student intended to disseminate pro-Ukrainian propaganda online and provide details of troop and law enforcement activities in the region.
The FSB’s actions underscore the Russian government’s intensified crackdown on any form of dissent or opposition to its military actions, as criticism of the armed forces has been criminalized. Thousands of individuals in Russia have faced detention or fines for expressing views contrary to the official narrative since the launch of large-scale hostilities in Ukraine.
