The 2nd Western District Military Court, sitting in an off-site session in Yelets, sentenced 22-year-old Yelets State University student Artyom Kuzin to 12 years in prison in a terrorism case linked to arson on the railway. The court’s press service reported the verdict.
Under the ruling, Kuzin is to spend the first three years in prison, with the remainder of the term in a maximum-security penal colony. The court also partly upheld a claim by Russian Railways and ordered the student to pay 938,809 rubles in compensation for property damage.
According to investigators, in December 2025 Kuzin began corresponding with a user of an unnamed Telegram channel. The court said that person allegedly offered him money for setting fire to a locomotive, supposedly in exchange for resolving financial and other problems.
The court said that on the evening of December 23, the student used a hammer to smash the glass in the cab door of a locomotive at the Yelets service locomotive depot, then poured flammable liquid inside and set the cab on fire using socks soaked with an inflammable substance. According to the court, he also threw his jacket into the cab to intensify the blaze and filmed the fire on video.
As a result, the court said, Russian Railways suffered damage exceeding 1 million rubles. Kuzin admitted in court that he had set the locomotive on fire, but said he acted under the pressure of financial problems and fears of possible prosecution after his personal data had been stolen from the Gosuslugi public services portal.
According to the court’s release, Kuzin said he committed the arson “to prove his loyalty to the Motherland.”
The court release says that people contacted him via Telegram and Yandex Telemost, presenting themselves as employees of the Central Bank and the National Anti-Terrorism Committee. The court treated those statements as testimony aimed at reducing his responsibility for what he had done.