Four residents of Kuban were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for a series of acts of sabotage.

The Krasnodar Regional Court found four residents of Kuban guilty of committing group acts of sabotage on the railway. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 13 to 15 years, to be served in a maximum-security penal colony.

According to the court, in December 2022, one of the convicted men received an offer to earn money by setting fire to transport infrastructure facilities. He recruited acquaintances to carry out the acts of sabotage. Together, they set fire to a relay cabinet near the Loris railway station, receiving 20,000 rubles for it, and then at the Krasnodar-Sortirovochnaya railway station, they set fire to a locomotive driver's cabin for a reward of 100,000 rubles.

The Krasnodar Regional Court found Semyon Shipulin, Arman Airapetyan, Daniil Evseyev, and Maxim Yaglov guilty under Part 2 of Article 281 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (sabotage) 1 , the press service of the courts of the Krasnodar Territory reported today.

"Depending on the role of each of the defendants, the court sentenced Shipulin, Airapetyan, and Evseyev to 15 years' imprisonment (the first three years in "Yaglov is serving 13 years (the first two years in prison, the remainder in a maximum-security penal colony)," the press service said in a statement.

"Caucasian Knot" also reported that Federal Security Service officers detained a Russian citizen, born in 1981, in connection with a case involving arson of railway electrical equipment in Krasnodar Krai. According to the FSB, the suspect contacted a representative of an unnamed "pro-Ukrainian terrorist organization" and, on his instructions, prepared an incendiary mixture.

In the southern regions of Russia, since the start of the military operation in Ukraine, there have been repeated arson attacks on railway equipment. Investigators are classifying these incidents as acts of sabotage and terrorism. At the end of May, a 19-year-old resident of the Neklinovsky district was detained in Taganrog for planning to set fire to a relay cabinet, and in June, security forces detained a resident of the village of Belozerny for setting fire to an electrical cabinet on the railroad.