Illustrative image. Photo: shutterstock.com.
The Lomonosovsky District Court of the Leningrad Region has remanded two Kazakh citizens in custody on suspicion of sabotage, the region’s unified court press service reported on February 3.
According to investigators, the suspects, both born in 2006 and originally from the city of Taraz and living in St. Petersburg, set fire to a distribution cabinet at a mobile operator’s base station in the Lomonosovsky District of the Leningrad Region on the instructions of “handlers.” The accomplices allegedly committed the act because of financial hardship and the lack of a legal source of income. They were promised a reward of 40,000 rubles for the arson.
The suspects were detained near the scene while attempting to flee by taxi. If convicted of sabotage committed by a group (Paragraph “a,” Part 2, Article 281 of the Russian Criminal Code), they face between 12 and 20 years in prison.
Kazakh citizens have previously been tried in Russia under the same article. In July 2024, the Moscow City Court sentenced Kazakh nationals Aleksandr Abram and Eduard Burdilov to 13 years in a penal colony for railway sabotage. According to reports, they set fire to relay cabinets on railway tracks near Varshavskoye Highway in Moscow for a reward of 30,000 rubles.
