In Russia's Far Eastern region of Khabarovsk, the FSB has begun arresting residents who allegedly supported or planned to support the Ukrainian army on treason charges. On Monday, the FSB announced that it had arrested a woman in the regional capital Khabarovsk who had transferred money for weapons, ammunition and uniforms to Ukrainian soldiers "out of political hatred and hostility" towards Russia.
The Khabarovsk is therefore accused of "treason", she threatens twelve to twenty years in prison. A video of the arrest shows two masked men in camouflage picking up a woman on the street, as well as the subsequent transfer of the detainees on the plane to Moscow.
Putin called on intelligence agencies to act
In the region, the FSB had already arrested a man at the beginning of March; he is accused of having planned to provide Ukraine with data on military objects in the area, which could have been used for "sabotage terrorist attacks". An arrest video was also circulated in his case.
Shortly before, at a meeting of the Intelligence College in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin had asked his agents to "respond" to "challenges" posed by "the Kiev regime" and "Western intelligence." Arrests such as those in the Khabarovsk region seem like success stories in this sense.
Who are the two people that the FSB led there, is unclear. In Monday's case, the intelligence agency introduced the woman as an "activist" of a movement in support of the region's former governor, Sergei Furgal. He had come into office in a protest vote and appeared as a problem solver close to the people, whereupon the FSB arrested him in the summer of 2020 on murder charges and transferred him to Moscow.
There, Furgal was recently sentenced to 22 years in prison. His case had led to mass protests in Khabarovsk, which lasted for months. Furgal's defenders said that none of the supporters had recognized the woman presented by the FSB; the claim that the detainee was such an activist was part of a campaign of blackening to discredit Furgal.