Detained in Nizhny Tagil in the case of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code), employees of the Uralvagonzavod, which produces tanks, are called Danil and Victoria Mukhametov, the BBC Russian Service and Kholod found out.
< p> 31-year-old Danil Mukhametov has been working at Uralvagonzavod as a process engineer since 2014 — he published a photo of a work pass on social networks. The man studied at the Ural Federal University with a degree in Special Machines and Devices and a branch of the Plekhanov University of Economics, where he wrote a thesis on the topic “Strategic and operational goals of the financial goal of an enterprise (using the example of Uralvagonzavod)”.
Mukhametov calls himself a photographer. The BBC found several of his ads: he offered photography in Nizhny Tagil and Moscow. 23-year-old Victoria Mukhametova worked at Uralvagonzavod as an “operator”, “something connected with computers,” a relative of the girl told reporters, and was also fond of photography.
According to the BBC, on March 22, the couple were detained at a bus stop in the center of Yekaterinburg and they were charged with petty hooliganism because of foul language (Part 1 of Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). Both were sentenced to 12 days of administrative arrest. The video of the couple's detention in Nizhny Tagil, already in the case of treason, was shown by the FSB only on April 4.
On the footage of the operational shooting, two security officers in camouflage are knocked to the ground at the exit from the entrance to Mukhametov. The third shows the detainee, lying in the doorway, his official ID. After that, the suspect in handcuffs is taken to the apartment where his wife is. She says that she handed over the drawings to foreigners, having received money for this — “in the region of a hundred”.
According to the FSB, the documents contained «information of a military-technical nature» that could be used against the Russian army in the war in Ukraine. The security forces also claim that they found «objects of espionage activity» in the spouses' apartment. TagilCity, citing unnamed sources, wrote that the couple made copies of the documentation and handed them over to the Ukrainian side.
Victoria's mother says that the couple are in Yekaterinburg. At the same time, there is no data on the websites of the courts of the Sverdlovsk region about the choice of a measure of restraint by Mukhametov.
On March 29, Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich was detained in Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage (Article 276 of the Criminal Code). He was taken to Moscow, after which the court sent him to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.
The Ural journalists who met with Gershkovich said that he was preparing a text about the work of Wagner PMC. Meduza reported that shortly before the arrest, the reporter visited Nizhny Tagil, where Uralvagonzavod is located. The FSB accuses Gershkovich of collecting information «constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.»