Russian court jails five for helicopter arson and sabotage 'at Ukraine's behest,' TASS reports

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian military court on Tuesday sentenced five people for up to 18 years in jail after finding them guilty of setting fire to railway infrastructure and a helicopter outside Moscow last year, the TASS state news agency reported.

TASS cited state prosecutors as saying that the group had acted on the orders of people close to Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency.

GUR posted video at the time purporting to show the helicopter, which it said belonged to the Russian Defence Ministry, on fire. But it did not claim responsibility for the attack.

The court, which helds its proceedings behind closed dors, was cited as saying that the defendants - four men and one woman - had set fire to a railway relay box and had later torched a search and rescue helicopter parked at the Ostafyevo airfield outside Moscow in April 2024.

Authorities swiftly arrested the five, who were between 19 and 22 years old at the time and all originally from the city of Norilsk in northern Russia. They were charged with sabotage and terrorism, TASS reported. It was not clear how they had pleaded.

Russian investigators were quoted as saying that one of the men had been recruited by Ukraine's intelligence services and had organised the attacks.

Russian officials have linked Ukraine-directed sabotage groups with numerous attacks on aircraft and railways aimed at disrupting Moscow's war effort since the full-scale conflict began over three years ago.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn)