Members of the Russian Volunteer Corps and Freedom of Russia Legion meet with journalists near the Ukraine-Russia border in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, 24 May 2023. Photo: EPA / Sergey Kozlov

A Moscow court has sentenced a Russian nuclear physicist to 18 years in prison for making a financial donation to Russian anti-Kremlin units fighting alongside the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday.

Ruslan Shadiev, an engineer at the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre in the closed city of Sarov in central Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, was found guilty of treason and financing terrorism, Kommersant said.

According to investigators, in 2023, Shadiev made a cryptocurrency transfer of around 1,200 rubles (€13) to the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, both of which fight alongside the AFU against the Russian military and are classed as terrorist organisations in Russia.

Part of the donation also went to Get Lost, a project that helps Russians fleeing mobilisation and political persecution. Though the group was designated a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities in January, donating to “foreign agents” is not a criminal offence under Russian law.

Shadiev pleaded for leniency, telling the court that he was unaware of the groups’ legal status in Russia and believed he was helping people in need, Kommersant said. It added that his relatives later tried to make amends by selling property and donating “several million” rubles to support the Russian military in Ukraine.

Despite Shadiev’s appeal, the court upheld his sentence, and he will now face four years in prison followed by 14 in a high-security penal colony, Kommersant reported.

According to an investigation by human rights organisation First Department, Russian courts — including Russian-administered courts operating in occupied Ukrainian territories — handed down a record 224 convictions for treason and espionage in the first half of 2025, averaging almost two per working day.

By comparison, 167 people were convicted under the same articles in 2023, and 143 in the first half of 2024. In total, 774 people have been convicted of similar offences since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.