A Russian man was sentenced Tuesday to 3 1/2 years in prison for burning a Quran in the Russian region of Chechnya.

A court in the capital Grozny handed the sentence to 20-year-old Nikita Zhuravel, who was detained in May 2023.

He was prosecuted under a law against offending religious believers' feelings after he burned a copy of the Quran outside a mosque in Volgograd, 800 kilometers (500 miles) from Grozny.

Russian investigators transferred his case to Chechnya. The Investigative Committee, which handles serious crimes, said this was because they received many messages from Chechnya residents asking to be designated injured parties.

Chechnya has a Muslim-majority population and its pro-Kremlin leader Ramzan Kadyrov is Russia's foremost Muslim leader.

State news agency TASS reported that Zhuravel pleaded guilty to the charges, repeatedly apologized in court, and said he had not thought about the consequences of his actions.

The Investigative Committee claimed that he was paid to burn the Koran by Ukrainian intelligence.

Russia introduced its law against offending the feelings of religious believers in 2013 as part of the Kremlin's turn toward conservative social values.