Stepan Korobocka, 21, sentenced to 19 years: first arrested for drugs, then charged with military enlistment office arson, then hit with treason charges

The 1st Eastern District Military Court handed down the verdict on March 12, according to the court’s press service. Korobochka will spend the first three years in a “prison”—a stricter, more isolating facility—before being transferred to a high-security penal colony for the remainder of his sentence.

The charges relate to an arson attack in fall 2023, when Korobochka, then 19, allegedly set fire to a military enlistment office in Blagoveshchensk, the regional capital of Amur region, his lawyer, Roman Malinovsky, told Mediazona.

“The court and prosecution consider the crime to have been completed, while we argue it was only an attempted arson,” Malinovsky said. He could not specify the exact date of the alleged attack, adding only: “I think it was in September 2023.”

Shot, a news Telegram channel, previously reported two attempted arson attacks on a Blagoveshchensk military enlistment office on September 25, 2023. In the first case, police detained two previously convicted men; in the second, the perpetrator escaped.

“An unknown individual ignited two bottles filled with flammable liquid, threw them at the building, and ran off,” the report said. “One of the bottles was immediately extinguished, while the other didn’t even break.”

Korobochka’s lawyer declined to comment on why his client had been charged with treason, citing a non-disclosure agreement. However, he noted that, according to investigators, the treason charge was considered an “additional qualifying element” of the arson case.

The military court’s verdict was combined with a previous conviction from a court in Astrakhan, a city in southern Russia some 7,500 kilometres away from Blagoveschensk, where Korobochka was found guilty of attempting to distribute large quantities of drugs. He was charged under laws covering “drug trafficking on a significant scale.”

His mother, Tatyana Korobochka, told Mediazona that her son had been detained in Astrakhan in October 2023. She said he had travelled there with a friend “on holiday.” The friend was later charged with attempting to conceal a serious crime.

On June 3, 2024, Astrakhan’s Leninsky District Court sentenced Korobochka to nine years in a high-security penal colony, while his friend was fined 150,000 roubles (approximately $1,700).

According to his mother, even before that case was concluded, officers from the FSB, Russia’s security service, visited the Astrakhan detention centre where her son was being held and charged him with setting fire to the military enlistment office in Blagoveshchensk. By December 2023, Korobochka had been added to Russia’s financial monitoring blacklist, which is used to track individuals suspected of extremism or terrorism.

“I came [to see my son in Astrakhan], and they told me about the enlistment office case as well,” she said. “They said, ‘He’s a conscript—so that’s probably why he set it on fire.’”

However, she pointed out that Korobochka had only received his draft notice in November 2023—by which time he was already in detention. While he admitted guilt, she believes he may have been coerced in the Astrakhan detention centre.

“I know for certain that he was beaten,” she said. “His ear was dripping, and at first, he couldn’t hear in it.”

She said she had sent him medicine and spoken to a prison doctor, but the doctor told her that her son’s “body was clean.” Later, her son told her he had been beaten during his arrest but begged her not to file a complaint, warning: “It will only make things worse.”

After his drug conviction, Korobochka was transferred to the Russian Far East, leaving his lawyers unable to appeal the ruling. His mother said she only found out about the treason charge from a Mediazona reporter.

“I haven’t seen the case files—the trial was closed,” she said. “Stepan didn’t tell me much either; you can’t say much during visits, and you can’t write everything in letters.”

Shortly before his arrest, Korobochka had dropped out of Amur Technical College, where he was studying to become an oil refinery operator. His friend, who was detained with him in Astrakhan, did not respond to Mediazona’s request for comment.