Andrei Lazarenko

According to the investigation, Lazarenko had agreed with the Ukrainian Azov regiment to set fire to a military recruitment office in the village of Bolshiye Berezniki in Mordovia. He allegedly contacted representatives of Azov, to whom he proposed to commit arson "in order to cooperate with the special services of Ukraine". Lazarenko then bought the necessary ingredients and involved his acquaintance Yurii Kravchenko. On October 15, 2023, he arrived at the recruitment office, but he did not have time to set it on fire - the Ukrainian was detained by the FSB officers. "Mediazona" wrote that evidence presented at the trial included an audio recording of a conversation fragment between Lazarenko and his friend Kravchenko, which took place a couple of days before the alleged arson. Both men, judging by their voices, are drunk. They discuss (slowly, with long pauses) how many metres it is worth throwing Molotov cocktails from. At one point, Kravchenko (he was the one who recorded the conversation) advises Lazarenko to throw away the phones - which ones and why is not clear from what was heard in court. Lazarenko himself insisted that the recording was obviously incomplete. "It took place in my flat in Berezniki. He was recording, and he also started this conversation. But it's not the whole recording, it's a small piece of what happened. I was proving to him that [setting fire to the recruitment office] was not necessary, but that was cut out, apparently. It's not on the tape. We were drinking at the time. It was Saturday or Sunday," Lazarenko told the court. According to Mediazona's source, Kravchenko could have framed Lazarenko for the sake of obtaining Russian citizenship. For this purpose, he bought a smartphone and, using Lazarenko's SIM card and name, corresponded with Azov. Mediazona's interlocutor claims that the defendant himself does not know how to handle a smartphone and uses only a button phone.