Mediazona: No fewer than 66 Russians arrested on railway sabotage charges, one third of them minors

At least 66 Russians have been arrested and charged with railway sabotage since last fall, Mediazona has calculated.

According to the independent outlet, 51 of these arrests took place since December 29, 2022, when Vladimir Putin signed a new law that increased the penalties for sabotage.

In most of these cases, the defendants are under 25 years of age. A full third of them are minors. The most common allegation is setting fire to train relay cabinets. Case materials often mention third parties who allegedly paid for the sabotage.

Another pattern is that prosecution often starts with less serious charges, later re-qualifying the allegations as “terrorism” or “sabotage.”

According to the attorney Pavel Chikov, founder of the human rights organization Agora, Russian prosecutors have started qualifying arson as terrorism and other serious felonies in the fall of 2022.