Russian boy sentenced to 5½ years in prison for railway arson when aged 14

Russia’s Military Court of Appeal has upheld the conviction of a 15-year-old boy from Vyborg, northwestern Russia, on vandalism and terror charges, and the 5½-year sentence he was given, independent Russian media outlet Veter reported on Tuesday.

Bogdan Protazanov, then aged 14, started a fire near a railway line in his hometown near the Finnish border in April after being threatened and intimidated into doing so by a group of scammers who had catfished him into sharing his location on a dating site.

Shortly after his interaction with a girl he met online, Protazanov was called by scammers claiming to be from Russia’s Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service.

Threatening to “send his parents to prison for life” if Protazanov didn’t comply with their demands, the scammers demanded that he transfer money to them from both his own bank card and his mother’s, before instructing him to buy petrol and set fire to a relay cabinet near Vyborg train station.

Protazanov complied with their instructions, but extinguished the fire immediately afterwards, just leaving soot on the railway equipment. The scammers took a screenshot of the fire and then told Protazanov to spray graffiti on a flower bed near the railway station.

The police were called to the scene by somebody who saw smoke from the fire. Riot police burst into the Protazanov family home at dawn the next morning, and the security services later released a video of the interrogation in which he confesses and apologises for his actions.

Protazanov’s father Vadim went to see the damage to the railway for himself, and took a photo showing that the equipment near to the site of the fire was undamaged. A Russian railway specialist also reportedly told Vadim Protazanov that the cabinet would have been unharmed by the fire.