Irkutsk man with epilepsy and a tracheostomy sentenced to fifteen years for treason
Dmitry Rupenko, who was detained after filming near an aviation plant, has been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, according to SOTAvision.
The first three and a half years are to be served in prison, the remainder in a strict-regime penal colony. The prosecution had sought seventeen years.
The Irkutsk Regional Court found Dmitry Rupenko guilty of treason under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code and of aiding and abetting sabotage under part 3 of Article 281.1. He was detained in July 2024 while operating a drone near the Irkutsk Aviation Plant. According to the investigation, he was acting on the instructions of a ‘Ukrainian handler’ and had himself proposed the plant as a target for Ukrainian drones. ‘A linguist from Moscow noted that the “Ukrainian handler” was imitating the Ukrainian language in correspondence with Rupenko,’ SOTAvision reports.
He was officially remanded in custody on 20 September 2024 — following his initial detention, he was held in a flat by FSB officers. Other defendants charged with treason — Vadim Nekrashchuk and Andrei Padalka — have similarly reported being held in an FSB safe house in Irkutsk.
Dmitry Rupenko is 32 years old. He has suffered from epilepsy since the age of eleven and from an organic personality disorder caused by epilepsy since the age of eighteen. He also has ulcerative colitis and has a Group II disability. He has made several suicide attempts over the course of his life; following one of them, a tracheostomy had to be performed. He has a large, unhealing wound in the front wall of his trachea that requires constant cleaning and dressing. According to his mother, remand prison sometimes lacks even hydrogen peroxide.
More broadly, he has faced the systematic denial of medical care in custody. He has made further suicide attempts while in remand prison. In March, he was placed in a punishment cell — which his mother described as ‘cold, windowless and infested with rats’.