The case of the explosion in the Arkhangelsk FSB will not be submitted to court. Investigators of the FSB stopped criminal prosecution of a teenager who had brought an explosive device into the building and died, TASS reported on May 24, citing the law enforcement’s source.
The explosion took place in the building of the FSB Directorate in Arkhangelsk on October 31, 2018. The device was detonated by Mikhail Zhlobitsky, a 17-year-old student of a polytechnic college. The explosion resulted in his death and three employees of the department being injured.
The case of the terroristic act was dismissed due to the suspect's death. This means that investigators are not going to prove the teenager’s guilt, but the charge is not considered dropped.
The Tushinsky court in Moscow is currently considering the case of another teenager who is accused of making an improvised bomb in 2018. According to TASS, the criminal case file contains his correspondence with the deceased student of a college in Arkhangelsk on vk.com where they talk about anarchist views.
After the terrorist attack in the Arkhangelsk FSB Directorate, investigators opened several criminal cases against Russians who commented on the explosion in social networks. They were accused of justifying terrorism.
In March 2020, Ivan Lyubshin from Kaluga was sentenced to five years and two months in jail. The case against Lyubshin was opened after he reposted the news about "terrorist from Arkhangelsk" Mikhail Zhlobitsky and called him a hero.
In 2019, two anarchists — Ekaterina Muranova from Karelia and Vyacheslav Lukichev from Kaliningrad — were fined for commenting on Zhlobitsky's actions.
In February 2019, Svetlana Prokopyeva, a journalist from Pskov, was accused of justifying terrorism after her radio broadcast on the local Echo of Moscow Radio Station where she tried to analyze Zhlobitsky’s reasoning. Prokopyeva’s trial has been postponed sine die due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Investigators filed a similar charge against Nadezhda Belova from Voronezh for a comment in social networks about the explosion in the Arkhangelsk FSB Directorate.
