A 19-year-old resident of Gukovo was sentenced to 4 years for attempting to set fire to the military enlistment office

19-year-old Vladyslav Matveenko, a resident of Hukovo, Rostov Region, was sentenced to four years in prison in the case of setting fire to the military enlistment office. The court found him guilty of hooliganism and attempted intentional destruction of property.

According to the investigation, on May 13 of last year, having received instructions from a certain “curator” on the Internet and a promise from him of a reward of three thousand rubles, Matveenko threw a Molotov cocktail into the building of the military commissariat in the cities of Gukovo and Zverevo. Two days later, he was detained. At the same time, only minor damage was caused to the building.

After Vladimir Putin announced the so-called partial mobilization for the continuation of the war in Ukraine last September, anti-war protests began in Russia, including the burning of military enlistment offices and administrative buildings. According to the human rights project “OVD-Info” as of December 2022, criminal cases were initiated against 44 Russians for similar actions. The mass media note that recently, investigative bodies qualify the arson of military enlistment centers not as hooliganism or intentional destruction of property, but as terrorist acts, which threatens the accused with much longer terms of imprisonment.

• In December of last year, a draft law was introduced in the State Duma on criminal punishment, up to life imprisonment, for facilitating subversive activities. The initiative was put forward by a group of deputies headed by Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodyn. According to the Criminal Code of Russia, sabotage is defined as, among other things, “arson set up with the aim of undermining the country’s defense capabilities.”