A Russian court sentenced a man to 25 years in prison on Monday for planning to set fire to a military office in Siberia in 2022, the year Moscow began its military operation in Ukraine.
Rights groups have labeled the sentence against Ilya Baburin as a record term and emphasized that the arson never took place.
Despite the planned attack not occurring, Russia experienced a surge of arson attacks on military offices after the Kremlin announced an unpopular military mobilization drive in September 2022.
A military court in Novosibirsk issued the sentence. Prosecutors accused Baburin of attempting to assist the Azov battalion, a Ukrainian military unit branded as a terrorist organization in Russia.
Prosecutors stated that Baburin developed a plan to set fire to the military commissariat in Novosibirsk. They alleged that he recruited someone to throw a Molotov cocktail at the army office, but the person instead reported him to the FSB security service.
Prosecutors also claimed that Baburin was acting on Ukrainian orders and had established contact with members of the Azov battalion.
TASS news agency published footage of Baburin in court, where he was seen wearing a tracksuit and smiling inside a glass cage for defendants.
“I did not set anything on fire,” Baburin said in court, according to the independent Dozhd TV channel.
He accused the FSB of attempting to score points during Moscow’s Ukraine campaign and of investigating absurd crimes.
Baburin, who was arrested in September 2022, was convicted of several charges, including terrorism and treason.
According to a transcript of a statement delivered in court and published by the Perviy Otdel rights group, his lawyer, Vasily Dubkov, argued this month that nobody was harmed.
“Baburin does not look like a spy giving out state secrets and did not have or hand out state secrets,” Dubkov said.
In a separate case, a military court in Saint Petersburg sentenced a cadet, Timur Kursanov, to eight years in prison on Monday for attempting to set fire to railway infrastructure last year.
The court stated that Kursanov was undergoing military service at an army institute and had received orders from an unnamed individual online. This person allegedly sought to engage in arson acts in exchange for money aimed at destroying transport infrastructure.
According to the court, Kursanov was arrested during an unsuccessful attempt to set fire to a railway intersection in Saint Petersburg in May of last year.
