Egor Metlin

According to investigators, Metlin, who served as a senior parachute packer at the Dinariy military airfield west of Tambov, became an "active supporter of right-wing radical nationalist ideology" in 2014 and, starting in 2017, during conversations with fellow servicemen, "expressed views advocating violent actions against representatives of non-Slavic ethnic groups." Initially, the Investigative Committee accused Metlin, who was detained by the FSB on 27 July 2019, of preparing a terrorist attack, claiming that he was on his way to retrieve Molotov cocktails from a hidden cache in order to set fire to the home of representatives of “non-Slavic ethnic groups” (Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code). A year later, the charges were reclassified under Part 1 of Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code, with the application of Part 3 of Article 30. Metlin denied the charges. His father, Mikhail, said that his son “held opposition views and did not conceal them at work,” and linked the criminal prosecution to Metlin’s refusal to go on a deployment to Syria in the summer of 2018.

He also described the case as a provocation, noting that Metlin’s conversations about Molotov cocktails and nationalism had been recorded by a fellow serviceman who coordinated his actions with an FSB officer overseeing the unit. Metlin’s lawyer pointed out that it was this fellow serviceman who had brought the materials for the incendiary mixture shortly before Metlin’s detention. Metlin was also charged with distributing pornography on VKontakte (Paragraph “b,” Part 3 of Article 242 of the Criminal Code), but this case was dismissed by the judge at the end of May. On 16 June 2021, Metlin was sentenced to a fine of 600,000 rubles but was exempted from serving the sentence due to the time he had already spent in pretrial detention.