A 15-year-old Russian schoolboy who repeatedly expressed his support for Ukraine has been sentenced to 4.5 years in a young offender institution for participating in a “terrorist organisation” and “undergoing training for a terrorist attack”, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Monday.
A court in the city of Khabarovsk in Russia’s Far East sentenced Valery Zaytsev on 16 August, but due to the closed-door nature of his trial, which lasted just five days, the verdict wasn’t made public for over a week.
Valery Zaytsev. Photo: Baza
The case against Zaytsev centred on a video he posted on his Telegram channel in which he and two other teenagers throw Molotov cocktails at a wall in an abandoned building, his grandmother Irina Zaytseva told Mediazona, adding that an unnamed witness for the prosecution who gave evidence to the court claimed that he had shot the video.
Zaytseva suggested that the unnamed witness was either a Federal Security Service (FSB) agent or “worked for them in some way”, claiming that “the provocateurs brought petrol and showed them how to do it, and Valera posted it.”
Another teenager featured in the video, 18-year-old Nikita Turlaev, was detained alongside Zaytsev in October, but his case is still being investigated, Mediazona wrote.
According to Zaytseva, Zaytsev partially admitted guilt, and received a lighter sentence than the 9 years initially requested by the prosecution.
Zaytsev, who lived in Solnechny, a small village in the Khabarovsk region, was detained in October while undergoing treatment for tuberculosis, according to human rights group OVD-Info. Guards at the pretrial detention centre where Zaytsev was held for 10 months told his relatives that his health was “fine”, without providing any further details, Zaytseva told Mediazona.
Zaytsev often expressed support for Ukraine at school, his classmates told Mediazona in October, telling them he had Ukrainian roots. His profile on VK, Russia’s largest social media platform, also featured a picture of him making a V sign with a photoshopped Kyiv Motherland Monument between his fingers, Mediazona wrote.
“Of course, Valera said a lot of wrong things about Ukraine and everything. But he didn’t do anything. He’s a child!” his grandmother said, adding that she saw FSB officers “sitting in the hall” while Zaytsev’s trial was taking place.
Zaytseva added that when he first arrived at the detention centre, Zaytsev had been unable to comprehend what was going on. “He kept asking me, ‘Grandma, why am I in jail? There are murderers here, drug addicts, thieves … What am I doing here?’”
