A Russian court handed down the country’s first prison sentence for arson recruitment amid a series of attacks across the country sparked by the invasion of Ukraine, The Moscow Times reports.
According to independent media, about 70 recruitment centers and government buildings have been attacked in Russia since the country invaded Ukraine on February 24, and on September 21, Vladimir Putin ordered a “partial” mobilization of reservists.
In Russia, anti-war arsons of military headquarters and administrative buildings continue. Since the start of the recruitment campaign, we have counted 41 new cases — 25 at the end of September and 16 in October.
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— Mediazona (@mediazona_en) November 2, 2022
The court found Ilya Farber guilty of allegedly throwing “Molotov cocktails” at a conscription station and a military commissariat in Udmurtia in May, which caused a fire and material damage. On Wednesday, the regional court sentenced the man to three years and two months in prison.
The 48-year-old Farber pleaded guilty, saying that “after seeing the fire, he realized what he had done and now regrets his actions,” the court said in a Telegram message.
The man faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of 2.6 million rubles ($43,000).
Russian media have identified Farber as a former rural art, literature and music teacher who was jailed for bribery in 2012 in a region north of Moscow. In 2013, a court more than halved his eight-year sentence after President Vladimir Putin expressed his outrage, The Moscow Times writes.
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