The 2nd Western District Military Court on June 26 sentenced 24-year-old Andrei Morozov to 12 years in prison in the case of attempting to join the Freedom of Russia Legion. Mediazona was informed about this by the press service of the court.
Morozov was found guilty of attempted participation in a terrorist organization, attempt to illegally cross the borderand in attempted treason. He will spend the first three years in prison, the remaining term in a maximum security colony. Morozov was also fined 40 thousand rubles and restricted freedom for a year.
In April 2021, the Vyborg City Court fined Morozov 40 thousand rubles under the article on evasion from the army. According to investigators, the young man avoided conscription from April 2018 to July 2022. He fully admitted his guilt and asked to consider the case in a special manner, that is, without examining the evidence.
Andrey Morozov. Photo: personal VKontakte page
SHOT and Kommersant wrote that in October 2023, Morozov decided to join the Freedom of Russia legion, filled out a membership form and sent it with photographs of documents to the recruiter. He received a message in a telegram that he had been accepted into the legion “as a stormtrooper,” and on October 29 he went to Bryansk by train.
There he took a bus and got to the village of Navlya, but the police detained him under the article on drug use (Article 6.9 of the Administrative Code). He was arrested for 11 days. After his release, Morozov tried to illegally cross the border on foot near the village of Novye Yurkovichi, but on the morning of November 11, 2023, he was detained by security forces. In December it was added to the Rosfinmonitoring list.
Judging by Morozov’s social networks, he was interested in anime and video games. According to publicly available databases, he recently worked at Tinkoff Bank.