MOSCOW, Dec 18 (Reuters) – A Belarusian man accused by Russia’s FSB security service of blowing up two trains in Siberia on the orders of Ukraine’s intelligence services was jailed for 22 years on Thursday by a military court.
Sergei Yeremeyev was found guilty of carrying out an act of terrorism and of planting explosives on two freight trains in 2023, one of which was travelling through Russia’s longest conventional rail tunnel at the time, the General Prosecutor said in a statement.
The FSB said at the time of his arrest that Yeremeyev had admitted his guilt.
The two attacks in Russia’s Buryatia region, which borders Mongolia and is thousands of miles from Ukraine, were claimed at the time by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) which said it wanted to disrupt railway lines in Siberia which it said Russia used for military supplies.
In the first attack on November 29 2023, explosives were detonated on a cargo train that was moving through the Severomuysky Tunnel which is 9.5 miles (15.3 km) long and on the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway.
The second attack, a day later, hit a freight train as it crossed the Chertov Bridge in the same region on a railway line used as a backup when trains are diverted from the Severomuysky Tunnel.
The attacks caused damage equivalent to 102 million roubles ($1.2 million) and disrupted train traffic, the General Prosecutor said.
Yeremeyev will serve the first five years of his sentence in jail before being transferred to a maximum security correctional prison camp, it said in a statement.
($1 = 79.8000 roubles)
(Reporting by Andrew OsbornEditing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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