An appellate court in Ingushetia has sentenced two residents of the republic — Ahmed Sakalov and Muhammad Tumgoev — to lengthy prison terms in a case concerning the preparation of a sabotage attack on a fuel and energy facility, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on Wednesday.
According to the agency, Tumgoev and Sakalov received 12 and 13-year sentences in maximum-security prisons, respectively.
In addition, each of them will have to pay a fine of ₽700,000 ($9,000).
The court found them guilty under articles of the Russian criminal code covering ‘preparation of sabotage committed by an organised group, involving an attack on a fuel and energy facility’, as well as ‘illegal acquisition, transfer, sale, storage, transportation or carrying of explosive substances or explosive devices’. No further details of the case were disclosed in the agency’s report.
The appellate court ruling follows a decision by the Supreme Court of Ingushetia in October 2025, which found 28-year-old Sakalov guilty of preparing a sabotage attack on a fuel and energy facility and of illegally storing explosive devices, sentencing him to 10 years’ imprisonment. At the time, the court stated that Sakalov was accused of preparing an explosion aimed at destroying or damaging an enterprise ‘with the purpose of undermining the economic security and defence capability of the Russian Federation’, committed as part of an organised group.
According to the prosecution’s version, in that case the total sentence under three articles of the criminal code amounted to 14 years’ imprisonment, but through partial aggregation of sentences, the court ultimately imposed a 10-year term. Sakalov disagreed with the verdict and filed an appeal, after which the punishment was made more severe and the prison term increased to 13 years.
Only one of the convicted persons is on Rosfinmonitoring's (Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service) list of terrorists and extremists. The details of 31-year-old Nazran native Tumgoev were added to the register on 23 September 2024, almost a year before the trial began, according to data from a Telegram bot that tracks updates to the list. Sakalov’s name does not appear in the register.
In recent months, several criminal cases involving accusations of preparing sabotage attacks and illegal trafficking of weapons and explosives have been under consideration in Ingushetia.
In November 2025, a court in the republic began examining a similar case against 29-year-old Ramazan Ekazhev and 26-year-old Alikhan Khidriev. Ekazhev faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment under the charges brought against him, while Khidriev faces up to 12 years.
Earlier, three residents of Ingushetia — two of whom were minors at the time of their detention — were accused of preparing a terrorist attack on a church in Sunzha on the instructions of a handler based abroad.
According to investigators, the teenagers were recruited in August 2024 by an unidentified individual who was allegedly a member of one of the terrorist groups, for the purpose of carrying out ‘sabotage and terrorist acts’ in Ingushetia. At the time, it was reported that the order to attack the church had been sent from Syria.
Elizaveta Chukharova
