The Central District Military Court sentenced a 20-year-old resident of the village of Turgenevo, Ardatovsky district of Mordovia, to 15 years in prison for setting fire to relay cabinets. This was reported by the publications “Capital S” and “Evening Saransk”.
The convicted person will spend the first four years in prison, the rest of the term in a maximum security colony. According to information on the court’s website, a resident of Mordovia was found guilty of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) and four counts of terrorist attack (clause “a” of Part 2 of Article 205 of the Criminal Code).
The case file does not indicate the name of the convicted person, however, “Capital S” writes that we are talking about 20-year-old Artem Begoyan from Ardatov. In December 2022, Begoyan was sent to a pre-trial detention center in the case of arson of relay cabinets — one of the arson occurred near the Alatyr railway station on the border of Chuvashia and Mordovia.
According to investigators, in December 2022, Begoyan, together with his acquaintances — Nikita Kitaykin, Artem Panin, Denis Golubev and Vadim Filyankin — set fire to relay cabinets in Chuvashia and Mordovia for money. According to the FSB, he took instructions for arson from a telegram chat administered by “two authors from Ukraine.” The intelligence service quoted amounts of 50 thousand rubles and 2 thousand dollars for arson.
Convicted Artem Begoyan/Photo from Begoyan’s page on VKontakte
Initially, all defendants in the case were accused of damaging property by arson (Part 2 of Article 167 of the Criminal Code), later Begoyan and Golubeva were re-qualified as charges of terrorism. The resident of Mordovia himself did not agree with the reclassification of the charges.
As the Solidarity Zone reported, he previously said that he set fire to cabinets for anti-war reasons — in particular, he tried to stop the supply of ammunition, equipment and manpower to the combat zone.
Later, in the case of arson of relay cabinets, 22-year-old Filyankin was sentenced to two years in a penal colony, Kitaykin was sent to forced labor for a year and seven months, and Panin’s case was dropped. The materials against Golubev under the article about the terrorist attack are now being considered by the Central District Military Court.
In February of this year, it became known that Begoyan was charged with treason. According to investigators, he collaborated with the Ukrainian intelligence services. “Zone of Solidarity” wrote that earlier a resident of Mordovia entered into a pre-trial agreement and testified against his acquaintances.
Shortly after this, the FSB reported that the investigation had been completed and the case had been transferred to court. The security forces claimed that Begoyan in 2022 began “confidential cooperation with the intelligence services of Ukraine via the Internet” and agreed to an offer “to commit terrorist acts for a reward.” The Telegram channel “Angry Chuvashia” of activist Semyon Kochkin connected Begoyan with the “Freedom of Russia” legion.
In early February, the 2nd Eastern District Military Court registered case materials against 13 people, 12 of them are accused of committing sabotage a group of persons (clause “a” of part 2 of article 281 of the Criminal Code), another — in promoting sabotage activities (part 3 of article 281.1 of the Criminal Code). Among the accused there is also the full namesake of the convicted Begoyan.
The press service of the court reported that the defendants in the case, from December 2022 to January 2023, committed sabotage at transport facilities in Moscow and the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and also tried to commit a terrorist attack on the territory of one of the military units of the Primorsky Territory.