On July 25, the Kursk Regional Court handed down sentences of 17 and 13 years in prison to former spouses convicted of state treason and preparation for sabotage. The court decision was reported by the press service of the local judicial institutions.
The court found a 50-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman guilty of state treason and preparation for sabotage. The former spouses allegedly collected information about military facilities in the region and planned to sabotage a railroad line used by the Defense Ministry for transporting military equipment.
TASS news agency reported that the defendants were employed at a defense enterprise.
The court proceedings began in late May, and the man was sentenced to 17 years in a strict regime penal colony, while his ex-wife received a 13-year sentence in a general regime colony. The court also imposed a fine of 800,000 rubles ($8,883) on them.
According to the human rights project "First Department," there have been 50 known cases of state treason since December 2022. Dmitry Zair-Bek, the head of the project, explained to 7x7 the potential reasons behind this surge. He noted that a similar trend was observed after the war in Georgia in 2008 and the start of the war in Donbas in 2014.
In July, the FSB announced the arrest of a "group of saboteurs" in the Kursk region. Allegedly, they were involved in collecting information about military facilities and preparing to sabotage the transportation infrastructure.