The schoolboy convicted of treason was sentenced

In Sochi, the appellate court upheld the sentence of four years in prison to 18-year-old schoolboy Kevin Lyk in the case of high treason.

Lyk was sentenced last December. According to the FSB, he photographed a military unit in Maykop and sent the pictures to a “representative of a foreign state.” At that moment, Lyk was not yet eighteen years old. He became the youngest person convicted in Russia on the charge of treason.

It was noted that the court took into account mitigating circumstances: a guilty plea and assistance to the investigation, the presence of chronic diseases, positive characteristics from school and “multiple victories at various Olympiads.”

The student has German citizenship, he was born in this country. He moved to Russia with his mother when he was 12 years old. German diplomats were refused a meeting with him.

• Earlier on Wednesday, the appellate military court in the Moscow Region upheld the sentence of six years in a correctional facility to another schoolboy, 17-year-old Egor Balazeykin, in the case of the attempted arson of three military recruitment centers.
• The RusNews publication claims that the convicted person’s health deteriorated sharply in the pretrial detention center and he became disabled – in particular, due to autoimmune hepatitis.
• It is also noted that during the trial of the first instance, the schoolboy “admitted the very fact of pelting the military registration office with bottles of flammable liquid, but did not agree with the wording and motives attributed to him by the prosecution. Balazeykin explained his action as a desire to stop the war, and also stated that he did not want to cause harm to people”.
• According to the data of the human rights project “OVD-Info”, in Russia today 850 people who opposed the war with Ukraine have been charged under one or another article of the criminal code. The number of those prosecuted under administrative articles is estimated in the thousands.