Ukraine charges Russian regional governor over financing invaders

Investigators from the Ternopil Office of Ukraine’s Security Service pressed charges against the governor of Russia’s Kostroma region, Sergey Sitnikov, who is believed to have financed Russian invasion units and provided them with thermal imagers and scopes.

This was announced on Facebook by the SBU press service, reports Ukrinform.

"During a pre-trial inquiry, it was established that the Russian official repeatedly handed over to the command of the 348th Motorized Rifle Regiment, 331st Guards Air Assault Regiment, and the 1065th Guards Artillery Regiment of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation thermal imagers, radios, trucks and ATVs, as well as supplied military uniform and various munitions to the invaders," the statement says.

Since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the authorities of Kostroma region, with Sitnikov’s direct participation, have handed over to Russian invaders about 170 cars and motorcycles, more than 29 thousand sets of warm clothes and shoes, 700 smokeless stoves, anti-drone guns, thermal imagers, night vision scopes, drones, and supplies.

The enemy used all this materiel on combat missions against the Ukrainian Armed Forces, with the aim of violently altering Ukraine’s borders.

In a bid to give a boost to the army recruitment campaign, the governor allowed free allocation of land plots for house construction to Russian military personnel deployed in Ukraine.

Based on the evidence collected, the SBU pressed charges against the governor in absentia under Art. 110-2 Part 3 of the Criminal Code. The suspect faces up to eight years in prison for providing financial and material support to Russian military personnel involved in hostilities in Ukraine.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, a Russian saboteur was detained in Odesa region upon plotting a series of arson attacks on railway infrastructure.