MOSCOW, May 4. /TASS/: Moscow’s Gagarinsky District Court has sentenced a Ukrainian national to a three-year prison term for an attempt to smuggle spare parts for a MiG-29 fighter jet into Ukraine, a source in law enforcement agencies told TASS on Tuesday.
"The Gagarinsky Court has found Ukrainian citizen Liventsov Sergei Ivanovich guilty of committing a crime under Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 226.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code (preparing for smuggling firearms or their basic parts, ammunition, weapons of mass destruction, their delivery vehicles, other armament, military hardware and also materials and equipment that can be used in creating weapons of mass destruction). He has been sentenced to a three-year jail term in a general security penal colony," the source said.
According to the data posted on the court’s website, the verdict was passed on April 23 and the convict and his defense team have already appealed against it.
Liventsov was apprehended in late 2019 and remanded in custody by Moscow’s Meshchansky Court. A criminal case was opened against him on counts of a crime stipulated by Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 226.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code. The investigation was conducted by the Federal Security Service (FSB) Department for Moscow and the Moscow Region.
As the source in law enforcement agencies told TASS, Liventsov was found guilty of an attempt to smuggle equipment that can be used in creating MiG-29 fighter aircraft.
"As the court has found, the accused person acting as a courier planned to illegally bring equipment into Ukraine that can be used in creating other military hardware: 32 high-pressure turbine blades that are parts of aircraft engines mounted on planes of the MiG-29 type," the source explained.
The defendant did not plead guilty, calling the criminal case a provocation by FSB operatives who allegedly themselves organized the delivery of spare parts and their transfer to him through suspect in the case Anatoly Yaropolov who received a three-year suspended sentence from Moscow’s Tushinsky Court last year. Yaropolov gave confessionary statements that helped solve and investigate the crime and also exposed other accomplices in the crime by concluding a plea deal.
