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Photo: Federal Security Service for the Krasnodar Region
An American citizen, Charles Wayne Zimmerman, has been sentenced to five years in a general-regime penal colony in Russia on charges of illegally transporting firearms and ammunition into the Eurasian Economic Union. The ruling was issued by the Central District Court in Sochi, and the decision was confirmed by the joint press service of the courts in Russia’s Krasnodar Region, business publication RBC reported.
According to court documents, Zimmerman had been traveling on his private yacht in the Mediterranean Sea since early July 2024, visiting Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. On June 19, he arrived at the port of Sochi, where he failed to disclose the presence of weapons and ammunition on board while undergoing border control checks. The firearms were discovered by officers of the regional branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) during an inspection of the vessel.
At the court hearing, the American did not dispute the charges and fully admitted his guilt. Zimmerman said he was traveling to Russia to visit a woman from Kazan whom he had met online. He told the court that he had not familiarized himself with Russian law and believed that weapons for self-defense could be kept on a yacht at all times. The Krasnodar Regional Court upheld the sentence on appeal, and the ruling has entered into legal force.
Russian authorities have used a wide range of pretexts to detain citizens of Western countries, seeking to build up a pool of prisoners for potential exchanges. In July 2024, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony. The following month, Gershkovich, along with prominent Russian opposition figures including Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, was exchanged for a group of Russian spies, hitmen, and fraudsters in the largest prisoner swap between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War.