The Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg sentenced 50-year-old local resident Alexei Belozersky to 14 years in prison, finding him guilty of terrorism, reported «Mediazona»*. He will spend the first four years in prison, and the remaining term in a high-security colony. The court also ordered the confiscation of the defendant's car.
The prosecution demanded 15 years in a high-security colony for Belozersky, with the first five years in prison.
Belozersky himself claims that in 2023 he threw three Molotov cocktails at the building of the Sverdlovsk region military enlistment office on the orders of phone scammers.
From August 19 to 21, 2023, Belozersky, who worked at the management company «Electrocenter», received calls in a messenger from two unknown individuals who posed as FSB officers and persuaded him to take out loans totaling 5.4 million rubles from several banks. After the man transferred most of the money to the scammers, they convinced him that he could recover the lost money by participating in a «special FSB operation»: setting fire to the military enlistment office.
On the evening of August 22, he drove to the building of the Sverdlovsk regional military enlistment office in his car, constantly talking to someone on the phone, changed clothes, then lit two bottles and threw them towards the main entrance. The main entrance of the enlistment office was not damaged, only a window was scorched, with damage amounting to 2,700 rubles.
Belozersky voluntarily went to the police, from where he was taken by FSB officers. The accused cooperated with the investigation, during a reenactment he detailed and demonstrated to law enforcement how he prepared the arson. However, he did not plead guilty to terrorism.
According to the investigation, the scammers who deceived the Yekaterinburg resident are connected with the Ukrainian intelligence and sabotage unit «Kraken». Lawyer Natalia Zakharova insisted during the proceedings that none of Belozersky's interlocutors introduced themselves as such, and he did not seek contacts with Ukrainian intelligence. Meanwhile, the indictment alternates between mentioning «scammers» and representatives of «Kraken». The investigation failed to find the scammers.
* Recognized as a «foreign agent» in Russia.