A Russian court has sentenced Diliaver Kurshutov from occupied Melitopol to ten years’ maximum-security imprisonment for supposedly planning to poison Russian military and ‘amassing chemical weapons of mass destruction.’ Scepticism is inevitable when the only ‘evidence’ to back the Russian FSB’s claim of having ‘thwarted planned acts of terrorism’ comes from a man held prisoner by the FSB, for many months before he was officially detained. These doubts are exacerbated by the huge difference between the original grandiose accusations and the final indictment.
Kurshutov was found ‘guilty’ of all charges on 23 September 2025 by ‘judge’ Oleg Viktorovich Volkov from Russia’s Southern District Military Court. There were virtually no hearings, so it seems likely that Kurshutov had not retracted the videoed ‘confession’ very likely made before charges were laid and he was formally remanded in custody. Although the first Russian reports on 4 March 2024 all asserted or implied that Kurshutov had only just been ‘caught’, the video produced was clearly from early Autumn. The Russian prosecutor general’s report essentially confirms this, by stating that the supposed ‘terrorist activities’ were stopped in September 2023. It seems likely, therefore, that Kurshutov had been in the FSB’s hands, without any formal status, for many months.
The timing of his ‘arrest’ is only one of multiple inconsistencies, with the final charges a far cry from the earlier sensational claims reported by TASS, Izvestia and other Russian and Russian-controlled propaganda sources. It is unclear what has happened to Hennadiy and Olha Kapranov(a), a couple from Melitopol who look in their sixties or older, and who were earlier claimed to have been ‘recruited’ by Kurshutov and ‘arrested’ at the same time. It was, purportedly, during the search of the Kapranov home that substances were found which could be used to create “chemical weapons of mass destruction”.
Kurshutov was supposed to have been planning an attack on Yevhen Balytsky, the Russian-installed ‘governor’ of occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast, as well as a series of ‘terrorist attacks’. He was claimed to have had two homemade explosive devices disguised as power-banks. The Russian reports on 4 March 2024 spoke of high-ranking military targets, however this seems like yet more hype, as such individuals do not eat in canteens where the alleged ‘crime’ was to be carried out. During the videoed stunt staged as an ‘integration’, Kurshutov said that the plan had been to slip the chemicals and methyl alcohol into soldiers’ food and drink.
It is standard for the FSB to claim to have thwarted ‘terrorist’ or ‘sabotage’ plans, with these invariably attributed to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence or to the Security Service. The allegations here, however, went much further. Russia claimed then that Ukraine was planning “terrorist attacks with the use of chemical weapons deploying an equivalent to BZ, a military-grade incapacitating agent which causes delirium and hallucinations to the point of helplessness.
One ‘report’ from January 2025 quoted a retired Russian general Aleksandr Pereplygin as having asserted on a state-controlled TV channel’s ‘’News of the week’ that the ‘weapons’ which Ukraine’s Military Intelligence had wanted to use to poison Balytsky were used in the USA. He asserted that Russia has never produced those chemicals and does not have them, but that it was, supposedly, used in weapons not only in the USA, but in a number of other NATO countries. “There are, therefore, all grounds for assuming that this terrorist act was planned out and organized by our western opponents.” Pereplygin claimed.
It seems likely that the reason why the media reports claimed that Kurshutov had been seized on, or just before, 4 March 2024 was for similar hype. Izvestia and other publications, for example, asserted that “the material of this case” as well as supposed other examples of use by Ukraine’s Armed Forces of poisonous substances would be raised at a session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at the Hague the following day.
It is, therefore, telling how little of the earlier allegations ended up in the final indictment. The charges against Kurshutov were of ‘planning a terrorist act as part of an organized group’ (Article 205 § 2a; of ‘planning a terrorist act as part of an organized group with the use of poisonous, toxic, dangerous chemical substances’ (Article 205 § 3a); ‘taking part in a terrorist organization’ (Article 205.4 § 2); ‘taking part in the illegal circulation of explosive substances and devices’ (Article 222.1 § 4 and of ‘amassing chemical weapons of mass destruction’ (Article 355).
Despite the barrage of such charges, and the claim that he had taken part in a ‘terrorist organization and planned ‘acts of terrorism in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts’, the only specific accusations were fairly minor Kurshutov was claimed to have taken part in moving and storing explosive substances; two explosive devices; toxic chemicals and poisonous substances – methyl alcohol.
There was no mention at all of any attack on Balytsky, and Kurshutov was not charged with having ‘recruited’ the Kapranovs. This, it should be said, is by no means the first time that Russia’s FSB and Russian state media have broadcast ‘videoed confessions’ where Ukrainians ‘admit’ to spying, acts of sabotage, etc. that are not reflected in the indictment. The only possible explanation for such surreal ‘confessions’ and subsequent lack of interest in them can be that they were extracted through torture and needed for propaganda purposes only. Confirmation of this has been given by Vladyslav Yesypenko, the Crimean Realities journalist imprisoned in occupied Crimea on absurd charges involving a grenade which the defence proved did not fit in the place the FSB claimed to have ‘found it’. There too, Yesypenko was tortured into ‘admitting’ to working for Ukraine’s Security Service, with this later omitted in the charges. There is every reason to assume that the same ‘uses’ have been made of Diliaver Kurshutov with the same methods of torture also applied. . The court (‘judge’ Oleg Viktorovich Volkov ) passed a ten-year sentence, with the first four years to be spent in a prison, the harshest of Russia’s penal institutions, and the remainder in a maximum-security prison colony. Kurshutov was also fined 500 thousand roubles.
