Russia jails officer for buying wrong hardware to protect Crimean bridge from Ukrainian attack - TASS

Source: Reuters

Russia jails officer for buying wrong hardware to protect Crimean bridge from Ukrainian attack - TASS

Reuters
January 16, 2024 9:21 AM EST Updated 17 hours ago

MOSCOW, Jan 16 (Reuters) - A court on Tuesday sentenced a former senior officer in the National Guard to six years in a prison colony after convicting him of buying equipment unable to protect the bridge which links southern Russia to Crimea, the TASS state news agency reported.

TASS said that Colonel Sergei Volkov had purchased two radar-based air defence systems for 395 million roubles ($4.5 million) which were meant to be able to bring down Ukrainian attack drones by suppressing their signal.

A military court in Moscow had determined that the equipment - which was also meant to protect a gas pipeline running from southern Russia to Crimea - needed modernising and upgrading to be effective and had found Volkov guilty of abusing his position, it said.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that Kyiv and the West do not recognise and say was illegal.

Volkov was reported to deny his guilt, saying he had acted within the law, and that the equipment was in fact intended to protect National Guard troops in various locations.

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-jails-officer-buying-wrong-hardware-protect-crimean-bridge-ukrainian-2024-01-16/

Alternate no-paywall link: https://news.yahoo.com/russia-jails-officer-buying-wrong-152118713.html