A Russian court on Monday sentenced a former soldier and a former paramedic to 19 years in prison after they threw Molotov cocktails at a town hall to protest the mobilization to fight in Ukraine.
This is the heaviest sentence so far for such attacks on official buildings, which have multiplied across Russia since the start of the offensive against Ukraine.
The two men, Roman Nasryev and Alexei Nureyev, were convicted by a military court in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, eastern Russia. They were charged with committing an organised “act of terrorism”, the state news agency TASS reported.
In mid-October, Nasryev and Nureyev, who were then working in the National Guard and the Emergency Situations Ministry respectively, broke a window on the ground floor of the town hall in Bakal, a small town in the Chelyabinsk region, investigators stated. They then threw several incendiary bottles at the building, which also housed a military census office, but without causing any casualties or major damage.
The two defendants did not deny the incident but rejected any act of terrorism, saying they wanted to denounce the military campaign in Ukraine.
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“I only wanted to show that in our city there are people against the mobilisation and 'special military operation' in Ukraine", Nuriev said during the trial.
The two men, longtime friends, played together in a rock band, according to Russian media.
Dozens of similar anti-war attacks, against public buildings, have been reported in Russia since the offensive in Ukraine began, but the charges and sentences handed down have so far been less severe.
The Russian authorities have a broad legislative arsenal to punish voices opposed to the offensive.
