A student from Barnaul received 16 years on charges of preparing a terrorist attack

A former student from Barnaul, 22-year-old Makar Puchkov, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in the case of preparing a terrorist attack. “Kommersant” writes about this with reference to the press service of the FSB administration in the Altai Territory.

According to the investigation, 22-year-old Puchkov became interested in “nationalist ideology” as a teenager, and at the beginning of 2021 he began to study the basics of subversive business and planned explosions in places where Muslims live.” The court believes that he planned to carry out terrorist attacks in a mosque, a migration center, the office of a company that deals with the preparation of documents for foreign citizens. In the apartment of Puchkova’s grandmother, they found explosives weighing more than 117 grams, detonators, chemicals, extremist literature, as well as a computer and a telephone “with photographic materials of reconnaissance of objects of criminal aggression, among which are places of mass gathering of Muslims.” .

According to the FSB, at the same time, Puchkov began to correspond via the Internet with representatives of the “Ukrainian nationalist organization.” The FSB did not provide evidence of the connection between Puchkov and Ukrainian nationalists.

The court handed down the sentence in August, and in January its decision was approved by the appeal commission. Puchkov pleaded guilty, but tried to appeal the sentence, which, in his opinion, was too harsh. He will spend the first three years in prison, after which the prisoner will be transferred to a high-security colony.

• Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the FSB regularly reports on arrests related to the activities of “Ukrainian nationalists”. For example, in May 2022 in the Kemerovo region, a “supporter of Ukrainian radicals” who, according to the special service, was going to disable power lines.
• In April, President Vladimir Putin and the FSB announced the arrest of alleged members of a terrorist group that planned an assassination attempt on TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov. It was claimed that the order to kill Solovyov came from the SBU, but Ukraine denied its involvement. Neither Putin, the FSB, nor the journalist himself presented evidence of the preparation of an attempt on Solovyov.
• In May 2021, the FSB announced the arrest of a man in the Stavropol region who was allegedly preparing a terrorist attack in Norilsk during a military parade on May 9. Apta Vysaev, a 36-year-old native of Grozny (Chechnya), who was previously tried for a terrorist attack, was detained. The FSB called him a “supporter of the Islamic State.”
• In February, the FSB announced the completion of the investigation into Vysaev’s criminal case. His relatives claim that the accusation of terrorism was fabricated, and the witness in the case told about the pressure from the secret service employees.