A court in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region has sentenced a 27-year-old resident of Lesnoy to 12 years in a strict regime prison colony on charges of treason for reportedly transferring money to support Ukraine’s military, Mediazona reported.
The defendant, Yevgeny Varaksin, was accused of sending 100 zloty (about $27) to “support the Ukrainian Armed Forces” while in Poland in April 2022. Prosecutors said he admitted guilt in part.
In addition to the prison term, the court imposed a fine of 300,000 rubles (about $3,700) and a probationary period of one and a half years. The trial was held behind closed doors.
Varaksin was arrested in July 2024. At the sentencing hearing, the court noted that he was unemployed, though Mediazona reported that in 2022, he had worked at Elektrokhimpribor in Lesnoy — a facility described on its website as “one of the leading enterprises of the nuclear weapons complex of the state corporation Rosatom.” The plant also produces civilian goods for the energy and oil and gas industries, geophysics, medicine, and the nuclear sector.
The case was heard by Judge Andrey Mineyev, who in July 2024 sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison. Gershkovich was released in early August as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and Western countries.