Russian ‘Jailed for Fighting With Azov’

Russian authorities reported sentencing a Russian citizen to jail time for ‘being a mercenary’ for his fighting in ‘Azov’ volunteer battalion in Ukrainian Donbas, Radio Svoboda reports.

Kirov City Court sentenced an unnamed local young man (24) to two and a half years of jail and a year of restriction of freedom. The man allegedly went to fight against the Russia-backed separatists in early 2015 and received over ₴21,000 in his eight months in ‘Azov’, which is currently a special forces unit of the Ukrainian National Guard, ‘as a mercenary’.

It is not specified when the sentence was passed. Kirov local online media Newsler.ru reports that the convicted man was studying in Kirov to be a lawyer and then disappeared. Later his coursemates who ‘thought he was weird’ found out that he went to Ukraine.

The story about a young man’s conviction could not be confirmed or disproved from other sources.

Source: Ukrayinska Pravda