The Ryazan region branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has opened a new criminal case against Russian and Italian dual-citizen Ruslan Sidiki, who was sentenced in May 2025 to 29 years in prison for an attack on the Dyagilevo military airfield near the city of Ryazan, blowing up railway tracks, and preparing another act of sabotage.
The rights project Ogni Svobody (lit. “Fires of Freedom”) reported that Sidiki is now also being accused of treason. According to information obtained by The Insider, investigators accuse him of passing information to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, carrying out sabotage in Kyiv’s interests, and transferring money through the cryptocurrency exchange Binance to support Ukraine’s armed forces. However, Sidiki’s alleged cooperation with Ukrainian military intelligence had already featured in his 2025 conviction, meaning some of the same alleged conduct that the FSB is now classifying as treason was already used to justify the 29-year sentence he is already serving.
In July 2023, Sidiki organized a drone attack on the Dyagilevo military airfield. Then, in November of that year, he blew up railway tracks in the Ryazan Region, derailing 19 cars of a freight train. He was also convicted of preparing another attack on the railway, though Sidiki denied involvement in that episode.
In May 2025, a court sentenced him to 29 years in prison. He is to serve the first nine years in a prison, a stricter form of incarceration under the Russian penal system, and the remaining 20 years in a high-security penal colony. On July 1, 2026, the Military Court of Appeal upheld the sentence.
After the judgment took effect, Sidiki was supposed to be transferred to prison. However, he is currently being held at Ryazan’s SIZO-1 pretrial detention center, where he was transferred in August from SIZO-2 in Ryazhsk. Ogni Svobody said the transfer to prison has now been delayed because of the new criminal case.
Under Russian law, treason can be punished by up to life imprisonment.
Sidiki holds both Russian and Italian citizenship. Franco Fausto Salamena, an assistant to the Italian consul in Russia, was in attendance during closing arguments and the announcement of Sidiki’s verdict in May 2025. Sidiki’s defense had also sought access for representatives of the Italian consulate.
After his arrest in November 2023, Sidiki said security officers tortured him in order to force a confession. He said he was beaten, subjected to electric shocks using a field telephone and a stun gun, suspended by his handcuffed arms, and threatened with sexualized violence.
When he was placed in a temporary detention facility (and later a pretrial detention center), medical staff documented numerous wounds, abrasions, hematomas, and bruises.
Russia’s Investigative Committee repeatedly refused to open a criminal case into the torture allegations. However, those decisions were later overturned by prosecutors and by senior officials in the regional branch of the Investigative Committee, and as of April 2026, an additional review of Sidiki’s allegations was still underway.
Sidiki’s lawyer, Igor Popovsky, had pushed for an investigation into the alleged torture. He obtained medical records documenting his client’s injuries, challenged the Investigative Committee’s refusals to open a case, and argued that Sidiki should be treated as a prisoner of war due to the fact that, according to the prosecution’s own version of events, he had acted in the interests of Ukrainian military intelligence.
In May 2026, Popovsky was detained by the Russian authorities on suspicion of large-scale fraud.
Sidiki acknowledged carrying out the attack on the airfield and the railway bombing but disputed prosecutors’ classification of the acts as terrorism. He argued that the targets were military aircraft and railway infrastructure used for military logistics, rather than civilians, and that his aim was not to intimidate the population.
Sidiki also said he had been in contact with representatives of Ukrainian intelligence, but maintained that he chose the specific targets and methods of attack himself.
