Prosecutors have requested an 18-year sentence for a woman from Tolyatti, central Russia, in a state treason case over her conversations about the “Freedom of Russia” Legion.

During the final arguments at the Central District Military Court, prosecutor Antonina Dolinina requested an 18-year general regime prison sentence for 27-year-old Polina Evtushenko, reports Sota.

The state prosecutor mentioned as a mitigating circumstance that Evtushenko has a seven-year-old daughter.

The defendant is charged under articles on preparation for high treason (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code with the application of Article 30, part 1), incitement to extremism (Part 2 of Article 280), terrorism (Part 2 of Article 205.5), rehabilitation of Nazism (Part 4 of Article 354.1), “military fakes” (Clause “d” Part 2 of Article 207.3), and financing of terrorism (Part 1.1 of Article 205.1).

Evtushenko was arrested in July 2023. Initially, she was only accused of preparing for high treason. The FSB claimed that she encouraged a resident of Samara to join the Freedom of Russia Legion and published guides for Russian soldiers on how to surrender.

“Holod” found out that the case was the result of a provocation and was initiated after a report by 36-year-old Samara resident Nikolai Komarov. He himself befriended Evtushenko on VKontakte six months before her arrest—at that time, she was posting content criticising the authorities and the invasion of Ukraine. Komarov repeatedly questioned Evtushenko about the Freedom of Russia Legion and secretly recorded their conversations.

“The recordings are cut. The parts that could justify me have been removed, and you can hear this because the conversations just cut off,” Evtushenko wrote to journalists from the pretrial detention centre. She insists that the full recordings make it clear she was not encouraging Komarov, but rather, was trying to dissuade him from participating in the war in Ukraine.

While Evtushenko was in the detention centre, she was charged with another five criminal offences, mainly related to posts on social media. She was accused of calling for terrorism for publishing content in support of the Freedom of Russia Legion. According to SOTA, the charge of rehabilitating Nazism was brought over a repost of a photo of Great Patriotic War veteran Shmakov depicted as Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings.” Experts judged the image to defile a symbol of military glory—the St George’s ribbon.