A court in Tallinn has sentenced a man with dual Russian-Estonian citizenship for publicly raising funds and buying drones for the Russian armed forces invading Ukraine.
The Harju district court on July 21 sentenced 43-year-old Vladimir Shilov to four months in prison, with another eight months suspended and a four-year probation period after finding him guilty of supporting the aggression of a foreign country.
The court also found Shilov's two co-defendants, Ilya and Ruslan Golembovsky, guilty of funding the drones' purchase, and handed each of them a suspended five-month prison term with a 20-month probation period.
Estonian authorities arrested Shilov on May 28 when he was crossing the Estonian-Russian border with three drones he had purchased in Estonia for the Russian armed forces in Ukraine.
After Russia launched its ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Shilov openly supported President Vladimir Putin and started a fundraising campaign online to buy drones for Russian troops, calling it "an act of support of our troops."
Ukraine and many countries of the European Union have criminalized support of Russian aggression against Ukraine since the beginning of the war.