Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation in September last year to bolster forces in Ukraine, prompting a mass exodus of men from Russia who sought to avoid being sent to the frontlines. Since the start of the military campaign, dozens of Molotov‑cocktail attacks on public buildings have been reported, but the penalties have generally been mild.
On Monday, a Russian court sentenced two former officials—former National Guard officer Roman Nasriyev and Alexei Nuriyev, a former employee of the emergencies ministry—to 19 years in prison for throwing Molotov cocktails at a town hall in protest against the mobilisation. The sentence, announced by state news agency TASS, is the heaviest punishment handed out so far for this type of attack.
The attack occurred on 22 October in the small town of Bakal in the southern Chelyabinsk region. The two men smashed a window of the town hall and threw several Molotov cocktails through it. No one was injured and the building suffered only minor damage. A military court classified the act as “terrorism” carried out by an organised group.
Nasriyev and Nuriyev did not deny their actions but rejected the terrorism charge, saying they intended only to protest Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. “I just wanted to show that, in our town, there were people opposed to mobilisation and the ‘special military operation’,” Nasriyev told the NGO Zona Solidarnosti during his trial.
The two friends also played together in a rock band, according to Russian news agencies. While similar Molotov‑cocktail attacks have been frequent since the war began, charges have typically been less severe. Russia has tightened its laws to silence dissent, resulting in hundreds of activists and ordinary citizens being fined or imprisoned for expressing opposition to the offensive.
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