Russian pensioner jailed for choking teen he mistook for ‘Ukrainian saboteur’

A court in the Russian republic of Buryatia has sentenced a local man to 8.5 years in prison for violently attacking a 17-year-old girl whom he had mistaken for a “Ukrainian saboteur”, regional news outlet Nomer Odin reported on Friday.

According to the investigation, 67-year-old Sergey Myasnikov grabbed the teenage girl by her hood and began choking her on the street in the village of Onokha on the evening of 14 June. As the girl struggled to free herself, Myasnikov dragged her towards the roadside, saying, “People like you need to be killed”.

The teenager managed to escape the initial attack and ran into the road calling for help, but Myasnikov knocked her down, resumed his attack and continued to voice death threats.

Myasnikov was eventually detained by passers-by. The teenager, who was not named in the report, recovered from the attack but experienced severe mental health problems and had to see a therapist.

Although Myasnikov did not admit his guilt, the court found him guilty of attempted murder motivated by hooliganism. In his testimony, he claimed he only wanted to seize the girl’s phone. Having seen reports of alleged “sabotage attempts by young people” recruited by Ukraine, he believed that she was taking pictures of local railway infrastructure.

“As a conscientious citizen of Russia, I perceived her actions as sabotage against the country and decided to stop her,” Myasnikov said in court.

Witnesses who helped pull Myasnikov away from the girl said he had used a derogatory slur for Ukrainians, and accused her of “passing on information” to Ukraine.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian security services have increasingly accused young people, including minors, of plotting or carrying out attempts at railway sabotage.

In November, for example, Russia’s Federal Security Service announced that its officers had shot dead two people suspected of preparing to commit sabotage on a railway line in the Altai region of southern Siberia, without naming the suspects.