1 February 2025
A pensioner who committed arson is a victim of both professional conmen and state repression
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya gazeta
The basics of criminal law in law schools are usually taught in the first year. This is one of the simplest and most well-developed disciplines (in comparison with civil law, for example). During seminars, along with textbooks, workbooks with ‘case studies’ are used that contain the outlines of ‘crimes’ that need to be classified, that is, the article of the Criminal Code under which the crimes fall needs to be determined: in each case, the object of the crime, its subject, the objective and subjective sides.
From a purely legal point of view, the case of a pensioner in St. Petersburg, who has just been sentenced to 10 years in prison for a terrorist act, appears to be a typical kind of ‘case’ that might be used in a law class. Even her first and last name are taken from that kind of textbook: Galina Ivanova. But the age of the ‘subject’ is 76 years, and according to Article 205 of the Criminal Code under which she was charged, she can be released on the grounds of ‘exemplary behaviour’ only after serving three quarters of her term.
Article 205 (an act of terrorism) provides that ‘the causing of an explosion, arson or other actions that frighten the population … in order to destabilize the activities of government authorities … or influence their decision-making’ is punishable by imprisonment for a term of 10 to 20 years.
Since the pensioner was taken into custody only in the courtroom, the day before she had met with journalists of the 47 News portal. Along with the text, in a video posted online Galina Naumovna, a very intelligent woman with a ‘Petersburg appearance’, talks about her tragedy, still hoping that the court will reclassify the charge to Article 167 of the Criminal Code: intentional destruction or damage to property, which carries a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment or a non-custodial sentence.
However, from the moment the criminal case was initiated under Article 205, and then the case was set to be heard in a military court, the ‘decade-long’ term limit was predetermined. The judge of the First District Military Court handed down this minimum sentence. As in recent years, all trials related to ‘terrorism’ were held behind closed doors, the verdict only becoming known via the press service, in which the judge’s name was not stated. But we can say with certainty what he was thinking when he signed the verdict: ‘If I don’t do this, someone else will…’
The actions for which Ivanova was prosecuted leave no doubt that she had no intention of committing ‘actions that would intimidate the population in order to destabilise the authorities’ operations, nor influence their decision-making.’ Her idiotic stunt did not cause significant damage. The phone scammers spent more than a month working on her, persuading her to transfer half a million of her savings to them. At their command, holding her mobile phone to her ear with one hand, she poured gasoline over an old pickup truck parked near the military recruitment centre with the other and ineptly tried to set it on fire, at which point the flame flared up and immediately went out.
The ‘FSB officer’ had promised her over the phone that when the car caught fire, the ‘bandit’ who stole her money would jump out of the military recruitment centre and be detained. Indeed, the driver did jump out — but not from the military recruitment centre, but from a nearby cafe, and not a bandit, but rather someone altogether unknown: judging by Ivanova’s story to 47 News, this man was not identified and interrogated. However, the pensioner herself was detained instantly, as if they had been ready for the attempted arson in advance.
This happened in November 2023, when stories of this kind were still not very common. In December 2024, dozens of similar arson attacks and explosions were committed in different cities (seven attempts were recorded in St. Petersburg and Leningrad region alone) – pensioners set fire to ATMs and police cars, and young men would throw molotov cocktails at the same military recruitment centre.
As of January 2025, Mediazona (declared a ‘foreign agent’ by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation), had recorded 187 arson attacks on military recruitment centres and other facilities organized by fraudsters, most of which were committed in 2024. A total of 280 attacks have occurred since the beginning of the war, but starting in March 2023 arson attacks carried out on the instructions of fraudsters gradually replaced those that were committed for political reasons.
Attempted arson of military recruitment centres, railway relay boxes and other elements of the national infrastructure can be classed differently: perpetrators can be charged under Article 205 (terrorism), Article 281 (sabotage) or Article 167 (destruction of property), of the Criminal Code. In October 2023, Mediazona reported 137 relay boxes destroyed by arson: 37 were classed as sabotage; 16 as terrorism; and 6 as destruction of property. In judicial practice, the prevailing trend is for these cases to be increasingly classified as either terrorism or sabotage. The Plenum of the Russian Supreme Court has not issued any clarifications on such cases and has left it to the courts of appeal and cassation to deal with the prosecutors’ objections.
According to Article 43 of the introduction to the Criminal Code, ‘punishment is used to reestablish social justice and also to provide correction for the convicted person and a deterrence against the commission of future crimes.’ Sentencing a pensioner, one may ask, achieves which of these goals?
In an interview with 47 News Galina Naumovna said:
‘Ten years in a penal colony is a death sentence for me. I wouldn’t even survive ten days… They convict and punish their victim. They start by conning a helpless old woman and then tricking her into committing a crime, and then having her imprisoned. Let her rot in there. Do you know what they told me?“Do it for Mother Russia!” … It is in our nature to trust the state and the State and now look where our faith and ideals have got us!’
What the pensioner Ivanova did has nothing at all to do with Article 205. It’s the court and ‘law enforcement agents’ who reacted to an imaginary act of terrorism with an act of state terror.
Among the readers of Novaya gazeta, I doubt there is a single person who has not been approached by scammers in a similar way. Of course, usually such things don’t go far. Not for nothing do banks make the effort to educate people about the risks. But what are the agents of ‘law enforcement’ doing? Given that these crimes have become widespread, these agencies, so busy going after opponents of the Special Military Operation, have failed to answer the following questions:
- Who is it that is behind these people who are provoking arsons and other acts of arson and vandalism, and what is their motivation (and not behind those who are engaged in financial scams – these people have a quite different motivation)?
- Why are they doing it?
According to the propaganda, the Ukrainians are responsible for this. But where is the evidence and what are the supposed motives?
These are the same questions asked in the usual kinds of criminal case. Here money is an obvious motive, but why take the additional risks of going after relay boxes and recruitment centres? Of all the versions, the only one that would seem to make much sense is that these provocations may in fact be the work of the ‘law enforcement agencies’ (possibly together with their networks of criminal informers) in order to improve their performance indicators and to feed the propaganda machine. This would also explain the logic of the judges who are prepared to go along with all this. Appointed ‘for life’ to their posts by the president, in reality they can removed very easily at the request of the FSB.
Translated by Dominic Reed and Oscar Seecharan
