Russian man gets 8 years for kidnapping, extortion

A court in Russia's Yakovlevsky district has sentenced a 37-year-old local resident to eight years in a strict-regime penal colony for illegal imprisonment and extortion. The court found that on April 7, 2025, the man and an acquaintance lured a victim to a house in the village of Kustovoye, where they used violence and a baseball bat to hold him captive. The assailants stole the victim's clothes, shoes, and phone, demanding a ransom of 2.225 million rubles. The case against the second defendant has been suspended because he departed for the 'special military operation' zone in Ukraine.