The Supreme Court of Ingushetia has sentenced two residents of Ingushetia to five and 11 years for acts of sabotage and the illegal trafficking of explosive substances.
Ramazan Ekazhev, age 30, has been sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment and 26-year-old Alikhan Khidriev was sentenced to five years, the court’s press service reported.
According to the court’s decision, Ekazhev will serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony, with the first three years to be spent in prison. He was also fined ₽500,000 ($6,500). Khidriev was sent to a general-regime penal colony and fined ₽300,000 ($3,900).
According to the prosecution, Ekazhev planned to carry out ‘an explosion of a strategically important facility, involving an attack on a fuel and energy complex facility and an organisation within the defence-industrial complex’. Khidriev’s role in the alleged plot has not been specified in the press service’s statement.
The published information does not indicate when or which specific facilities the convicted men were allegedly planning to blow up, nor what motives they were said to have had.
Ekazhev’s arrest became known in November 2024. At that time, regional and federal media outlets, citing law enforcement agencies, reported that he had allegedly intended to blow up a petrol depot. According to those reports, he had acquired, transported and stored an improvised explosive device with a capacity of around two kilogrammes in TNT equivalent.
The two were put on trial in late October 2025.
Earlier, in January 2025, the Appeals Court of Ingushetia delivered a verdict in another case involving explosives. It sentenced two residents of the republic accused of preparing to sabotage a petrol and energy complex facility to 13 and 12 years in prison.
Muhammad Tumgoev was sentenced to 12 years in a strict regime penal colony, and Ahmed Sakalov to 13 years in a strict regime penal colony. Details of that case were also not disclosed.
Elizaveta Chukharova
Cases involving charges of terrorism, sabotage, and the illegal trafficking of explosives are regularly considered by courts in the regions of the North Caucasus. According to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), during the first nine months of last year, 280 people were detained in these regions on suspicion of terrorism. Among the alleged offences were attempts to join foreign armed groups and participation in so-called ‘Ukrainian nationalist formations’.
In its official statements on such detentions, the FSB does not usually publish specific evidence of the detainees’ guilt or details of operational materials. Court press releases also typically provide brief formulations of the charges without a detailed description of the circumstances of the case or the evidentiary basis.
