A Russian court has sentenced a 35-year-old man from Karachay–Cherkessia, Aleksi Kaplunov, to life for allegedly expressing his intention to join the Freedom of Russia Legion, which fights alongside Ukrainian forces.

Kaplunov has been sentenced on charges of high treason and participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation by the Southern District military Court in Rostov-on-Don.

According to investigators, Kaplunov was serving a sentence at a prison in the Stavropol region when, in June 2024, he began corresponding with a representative of the Freedom of Russia Legion. He allegedly sent the representative a message expressing his intention to join the organisation.

‘The resident of Ust-Dzheguta, harbouring hostility towards the current authorities and opposing the “special military operation”, joined the ranks of a terrorist organisation in 2024 that provides assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out activities against the security of the Russian Federation’, the Stavropol Prosecutor’s Office said in a press release.

The Freedom of Russia Legion is a unit founded in 2022 and made up of Russian citizens fighting on Ukraine’s side against Russian forces. Russia’s Supreme Court designated the legion a terrorist organisation in March 2023, banning its activities in Russia.

Investigators said that Kaplunov subsequently collected and passed to a representative of the legion information about employees of the prison, including those responsible for guarding inmates and selecting prisoners who wanted to enlist in the Russian army, as well as information about inmates who had been sent to the front.

According to the Stavropol region Prosecutor’s Office, Kaplunov pleaded guilty. Under the sentence, he will spend the first six years of his sentence in the super-maximum-security prison and serve the remainder in a maximum-security prison. The verdict has not yet entered into force and can be appealed at the Military Court of Appeals.

Interfax also reported, citing the press service of the Southern District Military Court, that Kaplunov had previously served a sentence for robbery, but that the conviction was later expunged.

Kaplunov is not the first person from the North Caucasus or southern Russia to be sentenced in a case involving the Freedom of Russia Legion.

In January 2026, the Southern District Military Court sentenced a man from Sochi, Kirill Sidorov, to 11 years in prison for participating in the activities of a terrorist organisation. According to the prosecution, Sidorov sent photographs of infrastructure facilities in Sochi to representatives of the legion.

In March 2026, the same court sentenced Ilia Mezentsev, a man from Kislovodsk, to 12 years in a maximum security prison. According to the prosecution, Mezentsev photographed railway tracks in the city in June 2023 and, the following month, put up leaflets containing a link to the legion’s Telegram channel. He was convicted of publicly calling for terrorism and participating in the activities of a terrorist organisation.

In March 2025, the court sentenced 21-year-old Novorossiysk resident Dmitry Levin to 15 years in a maximum security prison for high treason and participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation. According to the prosecution, Levin collected information about Russian Navy vessels in Tsemess Bay in Novorossiysk and passed it to Ukrainian intelligence. Prosecutors said he photographed ships and other military facilities and sent the information to his contacts.

More recently, in early August 2026, the Southern District Military Court sentenced 34-year-old Novorossiysk resident Yevgeny Kalganov to 16 years in prison for high treason and financing terrorism. According to investigators, Kalganov, who had been living in Poland, made 15 money transfers to bank accounts belonging to representatives of the Freedom of Russia Legion.

Courts in Rostov-on-Don handle a significant proportion of such cases because the Southern District Military Court has jurisdiction over military units and related offences in southern Russia and the North Caucasus. In June 2026, the human rights project Pervy Otdel (‘First Department’) reported that the Rostov court ranked second in Russia for the number of convictions in high treason cases. According to human rights activists, however, the first convictions under the relevant articles first began to be handed down in Daghestan.

The rise in such cases comes amidst a broader crackdown on prosecutions under laws covering high treason, espionage, and cooperation with foreign organisations since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2025 alone, Russian courts handed down at least 458 convictions in this category of cases — more than at any previous point in modern Russian history.