The 1st Western District Military Court found Ukrainian citizen Bohdan Bohomazov guilty under three articles — for “espionage,” “preparation for a terrorist attack,” and “assistance to terrorist activities.” The defendant was sentenced to 19 years in a high-security colony, reported a SOTAvision* correspondent from the courtroom. The prosecution requested 24 years in a high-security colony.
Ukrainian citizen Bohdan Bohomazov moved to St. Petersburg from Kharkiv with his parents, brother, and sister in 2022, fleeing Russian bombings. The young man was detained on November 23, 2023, on charges of “espionage,” participation in and organization of “terrorist activities.”
According to the investigation, Bohomazov, under the nickname “Lilia,” coordinated actions for setting fire to military vehicles, blowing up railway tracks, and organizing provocations using pyrotechnics at a defense plant. The investigation believes that Bohomazov followed the instructions of his former classmate from Ukraine, Nikita Shevchenko, who is an SBU officer.
As Bohomazov himself claimed, when the war began, he and his friend Nikita Shevchenko started running a pro-Russian Telegram channel. After moving to Russia, he continued communicating with Nikita. Later, he was contacted by a person under the nickname “Oplot,” after communicating with whom he realized that Shevchenko had fallen “into the clutches of the SBU” because of their Telegram channel. “Oplot” gave Bohomazov a “reconnaissance task,” but the young man, according to him, deliberately “failed it.” He explained that he did not unequivocally refuse to carry out the tasks because he was worried about his friend and also thought he could later pass this information to Russian security forces.
In the debates, the prosecutor stated that the defendant passed on to Shevchenko data on two Bashkir security officers, Nigmatulin and Nemchenko, which he found in the “Eye of God” probe bot. It concerned the deputy head of the Federal Service of the National Guard of Russia in Bashkortostan, Rustam Nigmatulin, and an employee of the Sterlitamak military commissariat, Maxim Nemchenko. The information about them, the prosecutor noted, “could have been used against the security of the Russian Federation.”
Lawyer Dmitry Tikhonenko reported in the debates about numerous violations committed by the investigation. The evidence, according to the defense, was fabricated, and Bohomazov gave confessions under pressure and threats against him and his entire family. The prosecution believes that if Bohomazov was indeed under pressure, “he would not pose every time in front of the cameras with a smile on his face.” The lawyer, exercising the right to respond, stated that all accusations are only assumptions, and “the smile is the cherry on the cake of the evidence base.”
* Recognized in Russia as a “foreign agent.”