GROZNY, February 27. /TASS/. A court in Grozny has sentenced Nikita Zhuravel to 3 1/2 years in prison on charges of burning a copy of the Quran outside a mosque on orders from Ukrainian security services, according to a TASS reporter in the courtroom.

The verdict was announced by Judge Ruslan Dandayev. It is the punishment that had be sought by the prosecution.

Zhuravel was detained in May 2023 in Volgograd, where he did the burning. He confessed during interrogation that he had done it for money on the orders of Ukrainian security services. Staff from the Russian Investigative Committee in Chechnya took over the investigation, and the defendant was transferred to a pre-trial detention center in Grozny.

He was charged under two articles of the Russian Criminal Code: insulting the feelings of believers and hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. The complainants in the case were 13 imams of Grozny mosques. At the trial, Zhuravel pleaded partially guilty.