Krasnodar man sentenced to 20 years over a comment and a 3,144-ruble transfer to the RDK

This piece has two parts: a sourced news report, followed by the Sardaana News editorial position.

What happened

The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don has sentenced Krasnodar resident Evgeny Butko to 20 years in a strict-regime penal colony for state treason, justification of terrorism and assisting terrorism, Radio Svoboda reports.

According to the official version, in 2024 Butko “positively evaluated” online a unit of Russians fighting on Ukraine’s side, and that same year transferred cryptocurrency worth 3,144 rubles to representatives of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK). The court’s press service did not disclose the defendant’s position or the prosecution’s specific arguments. Russia designated the RDK a terrorist organization in autumn 2023.

Context

Amid the war in Ukraine, the number of treason sentences in southern Russia keeps growing, including over alleged links to the RDK; security services and prosecutors offer no evidence in their public statements (Radio Svoboda). In November 2025 the FSB detained a priest in Novorossiysk suspected of recruiting parishioners into the RDK. On May 22 the same court sentenced Sochi resident Andrei Miroshnikov to 16 years in a strict-regime colony on charges of contacting the RDK and photographing Sochi air-defense sites and the airport radar on a handler’s orders.

See also: Russia’s Justice Ministry to publish a registry of emigrants convicted in absentia.

Sardaana News editorial position

The Russian state takes revenge on people who oppose the war against Ukraine and refuse to die for Vladimir Putin in the trenches. Twenty years for a comment and a transfer of about three thousand rubles is terror by the courts, not justice: the regime equates any sympathy for Russians fighting against Putin’s war with “treason” and “terrorism.” Labeling the RDK “terrorist” is a tool to criminalize dissent, and southern Russia is filling its prisons with such cases.