The Military Court of Appeal upheld the legality of the sentence to Makar Puchkov, a former student from Barnaul, sentenced to 16 years for training to carry out terrorist attacks. According to the investigation, a young man who shares nationalist views planned explosions in places of mass residence of Muslims and a migration center, learning the basics of subversive business on the Internet. In 2021, the student was detained by the FSB when he was preparing to set fire to a car in Barnaul. Makar Puchkov fully admitted his guilt and asked for a mitigation of punishment, but was refused.
The verdict of a former student from Barnaul, 22-year-old Makar Puchkov, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison for terrorist crimes, has entered into force. This was reported in the press service of the FSB department for the Altai Territory.
According to the materials of the criminal case, Makar Puchkov was imbued with the ideas of racial superiority as a teenager, studied the works of the ideologists of nationalism, copying them into his laptop. At the beginning of 2021, the student, according to the case, became interested in terrorist groups, methods of planning and carrying out terrorist attacks, methods of disguise and the principles of conspiracy. According to the instructions downloaded from the Internet, the young man studied the explosive case.
He wrote down the recipe for the Molotov cocktail in a summary. My grandmother’s apartment and a friend’s garage became laboratories for the manufacture of explosives.
According to the security forces, the objects of terrorist attacks that the student planned could be a mosque, a migration center, an office of a company that handles documents for foreign citizens, a stall selling spices on the territory of the market, and a pavilion selling vegetables and fruits.
At the same time, the investigation established, the student began an Internet correspondence with a representative of a Ukrainian nationalist organization.
To join the organization, the Siberian was required to burn any car in the city and provide photographs as proof. By this, it is indicated in the case, the student had to confirm the seriousness of his intentions. He was given two weeks to complete the task.
However, the FSB intervened in these plans. Makar Puchkov was detained. In the apartment of the student’s grandmother, investigators seized an explosive weighing more than 117 g, detonators, chemicals, extremist, according to the investigation, literature, a computer and a smartphone “with photographic materials of reconnaissance of objects of criminal attacks, among which are places of mass residence of Muslims.”
The student was charged with undergoing training for terrorist activities (Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), illegal possession and manufacture of explosives and explosive devices (Article 222 and Article 223.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). He admitted his guilt in full, according to the Federal Security Service for the Altai Territory.
The case was considered by the 1st Eastern District Military Court at an offsite hearing in Barnaul. A panel of three judges sentenced the ex-student to 16 years in prison.
He will serve the first three years in prison, the remaining 13 years in a penal colony with a strict regime.
In addition, the judges sentenced him to one year of restriction of liberty after serving his sentence.
The defense side protested the verdict, considering it excessively harsh. The Military Court of Appeal upheld the lawyer’s complaint, and the verdict remained unchanged.