Judge Alexandra Kovalevskaya sentenced 19-year-old Mikhail Sidorov from Dolgoprudny to 8 years in a general regime penal colony in a sabotage case. He was found guilty of setting fire to a relay cabinet, reported a correspondent from the courtroom of the Moscow City Court. The court also recovered 10,514 rubles from him, received for committing the arson.
According to the accusation, the young people received an assignment to set the fire from a user on the Telegram messenger. In January 2024, Sidorov and his friend Yegor Melnikov, who were minors at the time, broke into a relay cabinet on the section between the stations "Mark-Lobnya" on the Savyolovsky direction of the Moscow railway. Then Sidorov set it on fire, and Melnikov filmed it on camera. According to "Memorial. Support for Political Prisoners", the damage from their actions was estimated at 20,752 rubles 53 kopecks.
The young people were detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center.
In October 2024, experts concluded that at the time of the arson, Sidorov "suffered from a chronic mental disorder in the form of organic personality disorder," therefore "could not understand the factual nature and social danger of his actions and control them." Sidorov's case began to be considered separately from Melnikov's case.
For the first time, the young man's case was considered from January to May in a closed session, precisely because of the results of the psychiatric examination.
However, for unknown reasons, the case was then returned to the prosecutor, and in September it began to be considered again in a regular open session. This indicates that the examination might have been excluded from the case to sentence Sidorov to a real term.
Recognized in Russia as "foreign agents".