Russian court sentences man to 22 years in prison for railway attack

MOSCOW — A military court in Moscow sentenced a dual Russian-Ukrainian citizen to 22 years in a “strict regime” penal colony on Wednesday for blowing up a railroad track last summer allegedly at the behest of Ukraine.

The court also handed Sergei Belavin a fine of 800,000 rubles ($8,875).

The July attack in the Bryansk region, which borders northern Ukraine, damaged a freight train traveling from Belarus and the railway track.

Belavin was convicted of charges of terrorism and the illegal acquisition, manufacture, transportation and storage of explosives.

Belavin, who hails from the embattled city of Sloviansk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, carried out the railway attack near the village of Robchik, Russia’s Investigative Committee said, on behalf of Ukrainian military intelligence.

The committee said that Belavin was recruited in 2019 by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate, after which he underwent training in Ukraine to take part in terrorist activities. The committee said that he “gained skills in handling explosives and radio-controlled explosive devices, knowledge of intelligence tactics, conspiracy, collection and transmission of information.”

In May, two further railway attacks on consecutive days derailed freight trains in the Bryansk region, which has also suffered sporadic cross-border shelling during the fighting in Ukraine.