Russian physicist given 21 years in prison for treason over donation to Ukrainian NGOs

A 34-year-old Russian physicist was sentenced to 21 years in prison and fined 700,000 rubles (€7,700) on Thursday after a Moscow court convicted him of treason, attacking critical infrastructure and preparing an act of sabotage, independent news outlet Mediazona has reported.

Artyom Khoroshilov was first arrested on treason charges in August 2024 after transferring 700,000 rubles (€7,700) to Come Back Alive and the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, two Ukrainian organisations that provide support to the Ukrainian military.

Though he pleaded guilty, Khoroshilov claimed that he had initially only intended to provide financial support to relatives and other civilians in the Kyiv region, but had struggled to find organisations that provided exclusively humanitarian aid. Khoroshilov said that he had been in a state of “emotional shock” when he donated to the charities in question, Mediazona reported.

Khoroshilov was also accused of organising a cyber attack on the Russian postal service in August 2022. The Distributed Denial of Service attack was allegedly launched from his home computer, where security officials claim to have found a software designed specifically to disable Russian Post servers.

This version of events has been strongly disputed by Khoroshilov’s colleagues at the Prokhorov General Physics Institute in Moscow, where he worked until his arrest, who have cast doubt on his technical ability to launch such an attack. One, speaking to Russian independent media outlet T-Invariant, argued that Khoroshilov “barely knew how to programme” at all. 

Khoroshilov was also found guilty of possessing bomb-making equipment and taking photographs of a railway near a military base. For his part, Khoroshilov claimed that the potassium nitrate found at his home was for scientific work, and that he had been unaware that the railway he had photographed was located close to a military site.