Eugene Mishchenko

According to the investigation, no earlier than October 14th 2022 and no later than March 8th 2023, he decided to join the "Freedom of Russia" Legion: "familiarised himself with propaganda materials on the Internet and began to support the ideology of the association", and then contacted "an unidentified person" in a telegram, whom he informed of his desire to join the legion, "offered to use his land plot in the village of Teploye, Smolensk region" to place missile launchers and expressed his desire to monitor Russian strategic military facilities. No later than May 30th 2023, he joined the legion and carried out its tasks: he collected information about enterprises of the military-industrial complex, places of storage of military equipment, went to the military airfield in Kubinka, shot a video there and sent it to a person who corresponded with him on behalf of the legion. During the court hearings, Mishchenko also said that some of his actions were provoked by a man who called himself Alexei Karasev: Mishchenko met him near the Boris Nemtsov memorial. At the trial it turned out that "Karasev" was an embedded employee of the Centre for Countering Extremism, but the case file shows that he agreed to participate in the deception of Mishchenko after he joined the Legion. Mishchenko claimed that Karasev had been introduced earlier. According to him, the operative distorted his words.