A former employee of the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations was convicted of treason in Kuban.

The Krasnodar Regional Court sentenced Lieutenant Colonel Igor Lominoga of the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations to a lengthy prison term, finding him guilty of treason.

Igor Lominoga is 62 years old. Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code carries a sentence of twelve to twenty years in prison, and in some cases, life imprisonment.

According to the prosecution, Lominoga confidentially collaborated with representatives of the Ukrainian Security Service from November 2023 to February 2024. As part of this collaboration, he "received equipment from an unidentified person that was planned for future use in sabotage and terrorist acts" in Russia, and also set up remote access and control for it, the Krasnodar Regional Prosecutor's Office reported on its Telegram channel.

According to the report, the equipment was planned to be transferred to "a specific individual," but the transfer was prevented by officers from the Kuban branch of the FSB. The court sentenced Lominoga to 14 years in a maximum-security prison with one year of restricted freedom.

Lominoga was previously charged under the article on confidential cooperation with a foreign state (Article 275.1 of the Russian Criminal Code), which is a "lighter" version of the article on treason. In November 2024, he was sentenced under this article, but the charges were subsequently apparently increased, and the case was sent back for a new trial, according to the human rights project "Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial"*.

Before his first sentence in 2024, Lominoga was subjected to so-called "carousel arrests": On May 17, the Neklinovsky District Court of the Rostov Region arrested him for eight days on charges of disobeying police. On June 6, the Kushchevsky District Court of Kuban arrested him for 15 days on the same charge. The ruling stated that police detained a man "showing obvious signs of alcohol intoxication," but he refused to undergo a medical examination. On June 20, Lominoga received another 15 days for disobeying police, but this time in a different district of Kuban, in the village of Leningradskaya.

Igor Lominoga graduated from the aviation school in the town of Vasilkov near Kyiv, after which he worked in the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations' administration in the Donetsk region. In 2008, Lominoga served in Mariupol, then retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel in the civil defense service, Mediazona reported*.

The publication notes that Lominoga was tried for treason, not espionage, meaning he had Russian citizenship at the time of his arrest.

* are included in the Russian register of foreign agents.

** The activities of Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) are banned in Russia.