An awkward situation at the tank factory In the wake of Evan Gershkovich’s arrest in Yekaterinburg, a young couple from a nearby city faces treason charges
Following espionage charges against jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested last week in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s Federal Security Service opened an apparently related case against a married couple from the nearby industrial city of Nizhny Tagil, home to the Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod. The circumstances of these latter arrests suggest that the FSB is building a treason investigation that intersects at least in part with the prosecution of Evan Gershkovich.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) for Russia’s Sverdlovsk region says it arrested a married couple from Nizhny Tagil on suspicion of collaborating with Ukraine’s intelligence community. Journalists at the news site Holod Media and BBC News Russian jointly identified the couple now in pretrial detention as Danil and Viktoria Mukhametov. Both individuals were employed at least until recently at the city’s main defense plant, Uralvagonzavod, which manufactures the Russian Armata and Proryv tanks. The Mukhametovs face treason charges.
The FSB alleges that the suspects were paid for sending military and technical information to Ukrainian intelligence operatives, and that these communications could have been used against the Russian military. Claiming that it seized “items related to espionage” from the couple’s home, the FSB released a heavily edited (and likely staged) video showing the Mukhametovs’ arrest and interrogation.
The footage shows the arrest followed by a conversation inside the couple’s apartment. A distorted voice behind the camera asks the young woman in the video about providing information to a foreign country, and whether that was “a blueprint or some other document.” The woman says it had been some blueprints, adding that she was paid about 100,000 rubles ($1,225).
The local news outlet TagilCity reports that Mukhametovs had worked at Uralvagonzavod, and that they were arrested in late March. The FSB itself did not publicize the case until April 4.
According to a Nizhny Tagil local who spoke to Holod, the man being arrested in the video is 31-year-old Danil Mukhametov and the young woman is his 23-year-old wife, Viktoria. BBC News Russian found a court order for the couple’s arrest, but the charges listed there have nothing to do with “treason” and instead state that the couple had used obscene language at a bus stop in Yekaterinburg city center in the presence of three witnesses including an FSB operative (who then reported them for “disorderly conduct”). The next day, a court sentenced the couple to 12 days in jail.
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On March 29, the FSB arrested American journalist Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg and rushed him by plane to Moscow, where he’s now being held at the city’s Lefortovo Prison. According to a Moscow-based foreign reporter who spoke with Meduza, Gershkovich visited Nizhny Tagil together with photographer Patrick Wack. The two left the area on March 19.
The FSB alleges that Gershkovich acted on assignment from the U.S. government, collecting comprising state secrets related to Russian military-industrial concerns, presumably about tank production by Uralvagonzavod. Without sharing any evidence, the Russian authorities say Gershkovich was apprehended “red-handed” in the act of receiving classified information.
Danil Mukhametov is an engineer. His social media posts show that he started working at Uralvagonzavod in 2014. He’s also a self-described photographer, which is potentially why the FSB confiscated his photo-equipment as “items related to espionage.” Danil’s wife Viktoria reportedly worked as a computerized-machinery operator. Her mother says a public defender is representing Viktoria because the family cannot afford to hire a private attorney. She learned about the treason charges against her daughter and son-in-law from the media.
One of Danil Mukhametov’s former classmates and co-workers at the plant says he doubts that the couple could have stolen state secrets, given that this information was simply unavailable to them, as it is the domain of a dedicated construction bureau. He added that all workers at the plant had to install apps that block their smartphone cameras. Describing his co-worker, he said that Mukhametov “wasn’t very bright” and often got himself into “awkward situations.”
