By Enyichukwu Enemanna
A military court in Moscow, the Russian capital, on Tuesday handed jail sentences to five young people in connection with the role they played in setting ablaze a helicopter and railway equipment on behalf of Ukraine, state-owned Russian media reports.
Since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been hit by dozens of sabotage attacks, many targeting its vast railway network.
The court sentenced Nikita Bulgakov, Roman Yakovets, Anastasia Mochalina, Daniil Yamskov and Stanislav Khamidullin, all in their early twenties, to between 12 and a half and 18 years, the state RIA Novosti news agency said.
They were convicted on charges of sabotage and terrorism.
The five convicts, who lived together in Moscow, were accused of setting a search and rescue helicopter on fire at a Moscow airfield in April 2024, in addition to burning railway equipment.
A video dated 26 April 2024, posted on the Ukrainian military intelligence service’s Telegram account, showed a helicopter being set on fire, captioned: “An enemy Ka-32 helicopter was burned at an airfield in Moscow.”
Apart from Mochalina, all the defendants pleaded guilty, saying they were looking for easy money.
Another defendant, Yamskov, pleaded that he be sent to the front lines in Ukraine to atone for his crime, a measure Russian authorities have offered to convicts in return for their freedom since the conflict began.
According to the Mediazona news outlet, the accused received about $300 in cryptocurrency for both acts from a handler, whom investigators identified only as “Tony”.
Mediazona said prosecutors estimated the cost of damage at $8.5 million.
Many of those accused of carrying out attacks on Russia’s railway infrastructure in the three years since the invasion of Ukraine are young people, some of them teenagers.
According to Kyiv, Russia transports troops and weaponry to its forces fighting in Ukraine through the rail network.
