The Verdict on Spring: The Vesna Case

The “Vesna” Verdict

A verdict was handed down in the Vesna case in Petersburg today. In 2018, members of this movement, which Russia designated “extremist” and “hostile” (or something along those lines, “undesirable,” etc.), held a protest: a funeral for Russia’s future. It turned out to be a long process: burying the future, imprisoning spring… Today is a bad day. The activists were convicted and sentenced to extremely long prison terms! The only female defendant, Anna Arkhipova, was sentenced to twelve years in prison; Yan Ksenzhepolsky, to eleven years; Vasily Neustroyev, to ten years; Pavel Sinelnikov, to seven and a half years; Yevgeny Zateyev, to six years and two months. Valentin Khoroshenin was also sentenced to six years and two months in prison despite the fact that he had testified against his comrades while in jail. It didn’t do him any good…. Look at his face today. He is the only one who looks lost to me. The other defendants were calm and dignified.

I may be naive, but I still believe that the future isn’t buried, that spring will come, that the gloom and the cold will simply fade away. It will happen naturally because that’s how the world works, and I believe this especially during Holy Week. “Wind and weather [will] change direction,” and spring will arrive.

I hadn’t taken photos in a courtroom for nearly nine months. Today was tough. I can recall only one case which dragged on longer than the Vesna case—the trial of the twenty-four fighters from the Azov Regiment. My sister Lizka has provided a detailed account of the Vesna case and the young people sentenced today. Give it a listen and/or a read! [See the embedded YouTube video and translation of the Mediazona article below—TRR.]

The natural flow of life suffices to make spring come, but to ensure that the earth hasn’t been depopulated by the time it does come—so that there is someone other than the beasties left to welcome that spring—we must remain human beings: we must know what is going on, empathize, and help out.

#FreeAllPoliticalPrisoners

Source: Alexandra Astakhova (Facebook), 8 April 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

A judge in St. Petersburg on Wednesday sentenced six former members of the democratic youth organization Vesna to prison sentences of varying lengths after they were found guilty of charges including extremism and spreading “war fakes.”

The activists, including one woman and five men, were no longer members of Vesna at the time of their arrests in June 2023.

Vesna, which means spring in Russian, was founded in St. Petersburg in 2013. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it staged anti-war rallies in Russian cities, shortly after which it was designated as an “extremist” organization.

The human rights group Memorial recognized the six former members sentenced to jail on Wednesday as political prisoners.

St. Petersburg’s City Court found all six guilty of organizing an extremist group, mass unrest, disseminating “fakes” about the Russian army, calling for actions that undermine national security and rehabilitating [sic] Nazism.

The longest prison sentence of 12 years was handed to Anna Arkhipova, followed by 11 years for Yan Ksenzhepolsky and 10 years for Vasily Neustroyev.

Pavel Sinelnikov was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison, while Yevgeny Zateyev and Valentin Khoroshenin each received six years and two months.

State prosecutors had requested prison sentences between eight years and 13 years.

The former activists initially pleaded not guilty in October 2024, but last July, Khoroshenin provided a “full confession” and testified against his co-defendants.

Arkhipova later said that Khoroshenin had told her after giving his confession that “what really matters isn’t what actually happened, but how the investigator wrote it up.”

Vesna declined a request for comment when contacted by the Moscow Times.

Source: “St. Petersburg Court Jails Former Members of Youth Activist Group Vesna,” Moscow Times, 8 April 2026

“Russia’s Future”: a 2018 protest action by Vesna. Photo: David Frenkel/Mediazona

Saint Petersburg City Court has handed down sentences to six former activists in the Vesna movement: Yevgeny Zateyev, Vasily Neustroyev, and Valentin Khoroshenin, of Petersburg; Yan Ksenzhepolsky, of Tver; Anna Arkhipova, of Novosibirsk; and Pavel Sinelnikov, of Barnaul. They were sentenced to stints in prison ranging from six to twelve years. In total, the case involves twenty-one suspects from thirteen regions. One of the defendants unexpectedly testified against his comrades in court. Mediazona offers its readers this brief overview of one of the most wide-ranging and dramatic trials against dissidents in recent years.

The democratic youth movement Vesna came to life with spirited, theatrical street protests in Petersburg over a dozen years ago. It came to an end in 2022 when it was banned, followed by the launching of a criminal case against it, leading to the arrests of some activists, and the exile of others.

“They made up their minds that [Vesna] was something along the lines of [Alexei Navalny’s] Anti-Corruption Foundation, I suppose,” muses one former Vesna member. The young woman asked not to be named, even though she had stepped away from politics before the movement was officially deemed “extremist.” She continues to live in Russia and hopes that the security services will “continue to overlook her.”

The playbooks for dismantling the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Vesna are indeed broadly similar:

The prosecution of Vesna activists began with searches warranted under an obscure criminal law statute concerning the creation of NGOs which infringe on people’s personal and civil rights. Charges of violating this very same statute had also formed the core of the case against the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
As happened with the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the security forces got Vesna designated an “extremist” organization. Following this, any public activity that police investigators deemed as “continuing” the movement’s work, such as posting on its social media, was regarded as a punishable offense.
In both cases, a wave of police searches of activists’ homes swept across various regions of Russia, and this was followed by a series of arrests.
Vesna’s most prominent figures were designated “foreign agents.” Many of them fled Russia and were placed on the wanted list. The security forces then took their revenge on those who remained behind.

The trial of the six Vesna activists in Petersburg had dragged on since the summer of 2024 and been one of the most high-profile political trials in wartime Russia, owing both to the steadfast stance taken by some of the defendants and to the dramatic about-face by others.

Mediazona, “The Vesna Case: Young People vs. ‘National Security,'” 7 April 2026

What is Vesna? What is it famous for?

Vesna was founded in February 2013. The new movement consisted of approximately fifty activists, many of whom hailed from the Petersburg branch of Youth Yabloko, which had dissolved a short time earlier. The goals Vesna voiced at the time were far removed from radicalism: “increasing the level of political engagement among young people” and “participating in Petersburg’s legislature and local government through elections.”

In their hometown, Vesna’s theatricalized processions and pickets quickly became a familiar fixture on the cultural and political scenes.

“Summer of Friendship” campaign, 2015. Photo: David Frenkel/Mediazona

In the summer of 2015, Vesna held an anti-war protest on Nevsky Prospekt, [Petersburg’s main thoroughfare]. Five activists stood holding signs that read “Write kind words to Ukraine” and a box where anyone could drop a postcard with words of support for the Ukrainian people.

In May 2016, Vesna marched through the city holding a banner reading “Circus, go away!” Opposition activists had not been permitted to hold May Day marches on Nevsky Prospekt, even though the country’s ruling United Russia party had been granted permission to march down the same route without any issues. In protest, Vesna activists staged an alternative procession in guise of a carnival: a young woman in church vestments with a fake belly demanded a ban on abortions, while another waved a censer by way of blessing a silver “Rogozin 1” rocket. Behind them walked a man with a TV set instead of a head. Someone carried a huge saw with the slogan “I support embezzlement!” Another carried a cello case stuffed with banknotes.

In January 2018, Vesna staged a mock funeral for Russia’s future: people dressed in mourning attire and with sorrowful expressions on their faces carried a coffin through the streets, adorned with children’s drawings that symbolized hopes for life in a free, democratic country.

In the summer of 2018, when Russia was hosting the FIFA World Cup, Vesna activists unfurled a banner reading “This World Cup Is Filled with Blood” on Palace Bridge in Petersburg. Vesna timed another protest against [torture in police custody] to coincide with the World Cup—a young woman, doused in red paint, lay down on a pedestal beneath a replica of the tournament’s official mascot, the wolf Zabivaka.

The movement grew rapidly. Regional chapters emerged, and by 2018 there were already around a dozen of them. By the late 2010s, Vesna was the most prominent youth organization in the Russian opposition’s ecosystem. No major protest took place without its activists being present. And yet, Vesna activists emphasized their commitment to legal methods of campaigning, as stated in their charter: “The movement pursues its work in accordance with the current laws of the Russian Federation.”

Vesna during the war: the first raids and interrogations

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the price of political dissent in Russia skyrocketed for all opponents of the government, and Vesna activists were no exception. On 3 May 2022, the movement announced the campaign “They Didn’t Fight for This,” calling on dissenters to attend the Immortal Regiment marches on 9 May (WWII Victory Day) but to carry anti-war placards at them.

A few days later, Vesna activists Yevgeny Zateyev and Valentin Khoroshenin, of Petersburg, and Roman Maximov, of Veliky Novgorod, who had already quit the movement, were targeted with searches of their homes. All three men were taken to Moscow for questioning and held in a temporary detention center pending trial.

These were the first steps in the investigation against Vesna activists. It was then that law enforcement authorities launched a criminal case into the setting up of an NGO that infringes on the personal rights of citizens.

The same day, search warrants were executed in Petersburg at the homes of the parents of Bogdan Litvin, Vesna’s federal coordinator, who had already left Russia, and activist Polina Barabash, as well as at the homes of former movement members Alexei Bezrukov and Artem Uimanen. In Moscow, searches were conducted at the homes of Timofei Vaskin, Angelina Roshchupko, Daria Pak, and Ivan Drobotov.

On 10 and 11 May 2022, the court issued restraining orders against Vaskin, Drobotov, Angelina Roshchupko, Maximov, Zateyev, and Khoroshenin, prohibiting them from certain actions. Soon after, Litvin and Drobotov were placed on the wanted list, as they had managed to leave Russia.

This did not stop Vesna, however. In September 2022, the youth activists announced protests against the military mobilization across Russia. Less than a month later, the Justice Ministry added the movement to its list of “foreign agents,” and the Saint Petersburg City Court ruled Vesna an “extremist” organization on 6 December 2022.

The charges and the trial

On 5 June 2023, the Investigative Committee opened a new criminal case, which later came to be known simply as the “big Vesna case.”

Searches were carried out the following day in Barnaul, Novosibirsk, Petersburg, and Tver. Six people were detained and taken to Moscow: Zateyev, Pavel Sinelnikov, Anna Arkhipova, Vasily Neustroyev, Yan Ksenzhepolsky, and Khoroshenin. On 8 June, a Moscow court remanded them to pretrial detention.

During the same pretrial detention hearing, the prosecution listed five charges: organizing and participating in an extremist group, desecrating the memory of defenders of the Fatherland, spreading “fake news” about the army, and calling for actions contrary to national security.

A year later, when the Saint Petersburg City Court began hearing the case against the six activists on its merits, there were seven charges. Incitement to mass unrest and the creation of an NGO infringing on citizens’ rights (the very same charge under which the activists’ homes had initially been searched in 2022) had been added to the bill of particulars.

The investigation assigned the role of leader and ideological instigator to Vesna’s federal coordinator Bogdan Litvin, who had managed to flee the country. According to law enforcement officials, it was Litvin who had driven the movement toward “extremism.”

Most of the charges were related to posts on Vesna’s social media accounts. Entered into the recorded were ninety posts made in Vesna’s name at various times on various platforms. When presenting evidence in court, the prosecution primarily read these posts aloud, listed the names of Telegram channels, cited viewer statistics, and read out the comments.

The indictment placed particular emphasis on a comment posted by a user known as “Kanoki Nagato,” on 1 May 2022. On one of Vesna’s Telegram channels, he suggested that Russians would one day start “killing the pigs, just like the Ukrainians did at Maidan.” According to the prosecution, the appearance of such a comment proved that Vesna was inciting dangerous actions. None of the defendants knows who “Kanoki Nagato” is, and law enforcement officials have not been able to identify this person either.

They did examine the personal accounts of the six defendants, however. Some of their Instagram accounts were found to be private. Speaking in court, the prosecutor called this “an attempt to conceal information from the investigation.”

When the prosecution presented its evidence in court, some of the hearings were held in closed session at the prosecutor’s office’s request, and members of the public and journalists were not allowed in the courtroom. Those involved in the proceedings are not permitted to disclose what they heard behind closed doors, but it is known that during at least some of these sessions, the court examined the results of intelligence operations—a term used in the Code of Criminal Procedure to refer, among other things, to wiretapping, undercover operations, and the interception and vetting of correspondence.

When it was the defense attorneys’ turn to present evidence, Arkhipova’s support group issued a public appeal: “The defense now urgently needs witnesses—people who actually took part in peaceful anti-war protests between February and May 2022 and have already suffered administrative penalties for doing so.”

Witnesses who responded to this post testified in court.

“To my mind, every citizen took to the streets out of a sense of duty and conscience. It was an entirely peaceful demonstration,” said one of them.

Another witness recounted that she was detained at an Immortal Regiment rally while holding up a portrait of her great-grandfather, and an administrative charge was filed against her for “discrediting” the army.

“I came out of my own free will. I’d participated in Immortal Regiment rallies before as well. At the time I made my decision, I hadn’t seen any notices on Telegram channels,” she explained.

A placard hung in the courthouse on the day the verdict in the Vesna trial was read out: “Yes to Vesna,* / No to war*! / And the truth* about them / is not extremism. / *Vesna, war, and truth are words forbidden in Russia in 2026.” Photo: Mediazona

At nearly every hearing in the trial, the defense insisted that the prosecution had no evidence that the accused activists were involved in posting most of the messages mentioned in the case file. Moreover, some of the defendants not only did not know each other prior to their arrest, but were also not members of Vesna at the time it was classified as an “extremist” organization.

Who’s who in the Vesna case

Yevgeny Zateyev, 24 years old

A resident of Petersburg, Zateyev was charged with violating Article 354.1.4 (“condoning Nazism”) and Article 282.1.1 (“establishing an extremist community”) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The charge that he had violated Article 239.2 (“organizing an association that infringes on the personhood and rights of citizens”) was dropped due to the statute of limitations. The prosecutor asked the court to sentence Zateyev to ten years in a penal colony. The actual sentence was six years and two months.

Zateyev served as the press secretary for the Vesna movement’s Petersburg branch. In court, he insisted that his duties were limited to local topics: news about life in Petersburg, announcements of lectures, and film screenings.

He viewed the outbreak of the war as a “personal tragedy.”

“Vesna tried to prevent further destruction and loss of life on both sides of the border—among both civilians and military personnel—through peaceful means. I still regard this goal in an entirely positive light,” Zateyev said in court.

He was one of the first Vesna activists to face criminal charges in the spring of 2022. Some of his comrades left Russia, but Zateyev stayed behind and wound up in a pretrial detention center a year later.

In the summer of 2023, Zateyev wrote a letter from jail explaining why he had decided against fleeing the country.

“I made a very difficult and very painful choice. Was it a painful choice? Of course it was. I find it hard to imagine, though, how I could have left everything behind, gone away, and watched as my friends and acquaintances were imprisoned. This choice was easy for some, but I don’t judge them.”

In the same letter, Zateyev asked that his family not be judged for failing to “change [his] mind.”

In November 2023, Zateyev partially admitted his guilt in the hope of having his pretrial detention conditions eased. He was concerned about his family, especially his grandmother, who was seventy-seven years old at the time of his arrest. Zateyev was not released from pretrial detention, and so he withdrew his confession.

In January 2024, Zateyev’s grandmother died. Four months later, his mother also died, from cirrhosis of the liver.

Zateyev’s pretrial detention was extended once again shortly thereafter. Addressing the court, he mentioned the deaths of his loved ones. Judge Irina Furmanova interrupted him.

“Please do not try to pressure the court by bringing up the deaths of your relatives.”

“I am not putting any pressure on the court. I am simply stating the facts of my life.”

“We are familiar with them. You can merely note what you’ve been through. There’s no need to pressure us like that.”

“Your Honor, pressure—”

“Everyone has, or some people no longer have, a mother. There’s no need to pressure us in that regard. I’ll say it again. Let’s continue.”

In his closing statement, Zateyev said that he was forgiving the investigators, prosecutors, and judges.

“I caution against the false belief that forgiveness absolves one of responsibility. It does not. I do believe, however, that through forgiveness, we can understand the reasons behind what is happening—why and for what purpose. By ridding ourselves of an age-old evil, learning to treat one another with understanding, we can finally find love. I believe that this is possible and even inevitable in Russia. Spring [vesna] is inevitable. The season, of course. What did you think I meant?”

Mailing address for letters:

Russia 196655 St. Petersburg, Kolpino
Kolpinskaya St., d. 9, str. 1
Pretrial Detention Center No. 1
Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region
Yevgeny Artemovich Zateyev, born 2001

Bank card number for donations: 2200 7009 1119 8470

Anna Arkhipova, 28 years old

A resident of Novosibirsk, Arkhipova was charged with violating Articles 282.1.1 and 282.1.2 (“organizing an extremist community”), Article 354.1.4 (“condoning Nazism”), Article 280.4.3 (“discrediting the Russian armed forces”), Article 212.1.1 (“repeatedly violating the law on public assemblies”), and Articles 207.3.2.b and 207.3.2.e (“disseminating knowingly false information about the Russian armed forces”) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The charge that she had violated Article 239.3 (“organizing an association that infringes on the personhood and rights of citizens”) was dropped due to the statute of limitations. The prosecutor asked the court to sentence Arkhipova to thirteen years in prison. The judge sentenced her to twelve years in prison instead.

Arkhipova joined Vesna in February 2021 to “take a civic stand, engage in publicly vital work, and meet new people.” She wrote posts for the movement’s social media accounts but quickly grew tired of “conflicts within the group” and left in May 2022.

Once the war in Ukraine had kicked off, Vesna’s work became “random and certainly not organized,” according to Arkhipova.

“Everything happened naturally,” Arkhipova said in court. “I felt the need to protest the war, as I regarded it and continue to regard it as a great catastrophe and tragedy. That is why I took part in a street protest in Novosibirsk on 24 February 2022.”

Of the ninety posts listed in the criminal indictment, she wrote one.

“I was involved in the publication dated 29 April 2022, [as charged] under Article 207.3, but I find it difficult to say exactly what role I played. [The text] was discussed at great length, and I didn’t really want to have anything to do with it at all. Either I acted as the author, after which it was heavily edited, or another person was the author, after which I heavily edited it,” the young woman explained in court.

Arkhipova’s support group runs a Telegram channel where her letters to the outside world are posted sometimes. In the “Cell Librarian” section, she talks about the books she has read in pretrial detention.

She also writes about the health problems typically experienced by prisoners. Due to poor nutrition, all women in the detention center lose their hair, and even a simple cold is dangerous.

“The worst part is that you’re not permitted to make your bed during the day, so you’re freezing and shivering, and all you have to cover yourself with is a towel. Illnesses are illnesses, but we still have to follow the prison rules!”

Arkhipova is a vegan. It is difficult to follow this diet in pretrial detention. She is very dependent on care packages, which arrive with considerable delays. Her support group secured permission to send her plant-based milk substitutes, but the detention center declined to accept them, stating, “We don’t even allow dairy products for mothers with children.”

“My motivation is simple: I oppose the war. I want a better future for Russia. I have tried to act on my conscience all my life, even though I haven’t always succeeded. When the war began, it was my conscience that wouldn’t let me stand idly by. People on both sides of the border deserve peace: soldiers should be with their families, not in foxholes, and those who were killed should have lived. I feel the same pain for everyone, regardless of their uniform,” said Arkhipova in her closing statement.

Mailing address for letters:

Russia 195009 St. Petersburg
11 Arsenalnaya St.
Pretrial Detention Center No. 5
Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region
Anna Nikolayevna Arkhipova, born 1997

Bank account numbers for donations: 2200 7008 6021 1167 (T-Bank) • 2202 2071 9921 3904 (Sberbank)

You can follow the latest news on the Telegram channel of Arkhipova’s support group.

Vasily Neustroyev, 30 years old

A resident of Petersburg, Vasily Neustroyev was charged with violating Article 280.4.3 (“publicly threatening national security”), Article 212.1.1 (“repeatedly violating the law on public assemblies”), Article 354.1.4 (“condoning Nazism”), Article 282.1.1 (“organizing an extremist community”) and Articles 207.3.2.b and 207.3.2.e (“disseminating knowingly false information about the Russian armed forces”) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The charge that Neustroyev had violated Article 239.2 (“organizing an association that infringes on the personhood and rights of citizens”) was dropped due to the statute of limitations. The prosecution asked the court to sentence Neustroyev to twelve years in prison, but the judge sentenced him to ten years instead.

According to the prosecution, Neustroyev was on Vesna’s federal audit commission and was one of its leaders. Neustroyev himself stated in court that he did not make any decisions within the movement. He did not even have access to social media and could not have published any of the posts ascribed to him. He met most of his “accomplices” only after his arrest. Before his arrest, he was acquainted only with Khoroshenin and Maximov, and knew Zateyev only by sight.

When asked about Litvin—whom investigators consider the leader of Vesna and under whose influence the movement allegedly turned into an “extremist organization”—Neustroyev laughed and said that the main topic of their conversations had been cats.

“Since the autumn of 2018, we’ve been the owners of cats—brothers from the same litter, which we got from the same source,” Neustroyev explained. “Since then, Bogdan Gennadyevich has left his cat with me to look after two or three times. You could say that we became something like in-laws through the cats. The cats were the main topic of our conversations in the years leading up to my arrest.”

The Petersburger did not renounce his anti-war views in court.

“I consider the actions of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin not only a crime against both Ukraine and Russia in equal measure, but also a great folly.”

And yet, Neustroyev “remained skeptical of mass street protests.” He was a member of Petersburg Yabloko’s council and was heavily involved in elections work for a long time. He coordinated election monitoring, and since 2020 had been a voting member of one of the city’s Territorial Election Commissions.

In a letter from the detention center, Neustroev voiced deep regret that he had not yet managed to finish his university education. He had just resumed his studies before his arrest, and if not for the criminal case, he might already have a degree.

“Nevertheless, I still plan to eventually obtain a formal tertiary degree and put this source of anxiety behind me.”

He spoke about Russia in his closing statement.

“Russia is strong. Russia will survive all tyrants and dictators, just as it has done before. I know that Russia will be peaceful, Russia will be happy, Russia will be free. And all of us will be peaceful, happy, and free along with her.”

Mailing address for letters:

Bank account numbers for donations: 2202 2063 1466 1708 (Sberbank) • 2200 2460 0202 0868 (VTB) • 2200 7009 3739 5001 (Т-Bank)

You can follow the latest news on the Telegram channel of Neustroyev’s support group.

Pavel Sinelnikov, 24 years old

A resident of Barnaul, Pavel Sinelnikov was charged with violating Articles 282.1.1 and 282.1.2 (“organizing and participating in an extremist community”) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The prosecution had asked the court to send him down for ten years, but instead the judge sentenced to him to seven and a half years in prison.

Sinelnikov served as Vesna’s executive secretary for several months but left the movement in 2021, long before it had been designated “extremist.”

“The work isn’t hard: you just sit there and write. But taking all those minutes is time-consuming and quite boring. So I really feel for the court clerk,” Sinelnikov explained in court.

He was baffled how the same person could be accused of both establishing an “extremist community” and participating in it, and he made no secret of the fact that the arrest had come as a shock to him.

“I didn’t expect at all that some police investigators would actually fly all the way from Moscow to Barnaul just to get me. As far as I’m concerned, the police search itself is a form of intense coercion, especially the way it’s done. They force their way into your life while yelling and shouting, don’t even let you get dressed, push you face-down on the floor, and then turn everything upside down while cracking high-school-level jokes,” Sinelnikov recalled.

He confessed immediately after his arrest, but later recanted his testimony.

“You can’t take away people’s opinions, but it’s easy to take away their freedom of speech. That’s what happened to me, even though I’m just a binnocent eyestander.”

In court, Sinelnikov explained that he had been fascinated by science and maths at school. He often traveled to academic competitions, and became interested in politics during one such trip to Moscow. He described himself as an introvert and a loner, and his mother even called her son a “slacker” in court.

“Well, Mom knows best,” Sinelnikov replied.

Sinelnikov began his closing statement by admitting that he didn’t really have much to say. But then he called the charges politically motivated and the trial “abhorrent.”

“There was no criminal extremist group. No one planned any crimes, no socially dangerous actions were committed, and there were no socially dangerous consequences either. No harm was done either to society or the public interest. We didn’t even have any motives for or intentions of doing so. Do I deserve ten years in prison for that?”

Mailing address for letters:

Bank account number for donations: 2200 7019 7373 4749

You can follow the latest news on the Telegram channel of Sinelnikov’s support group.

Yan Ksenzhepolsky, 25 years old

A resident of Tver, Yan Ksenzhepolsky was charged with violating Article 280.4.3 (“discrediting the Russian armed forces”), Article 212.1.1 (“repeatedly violating the law on public assemblies”), Article 354.1.4 (“condoning Nazism”), Article 282.1.1 (“organizing an extremist community”), and Articles 207.3.2.b and 207.3.2.e (“disseminating knowingly false information about the Russian armed forces”) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The charge that he had violated Article 239.2 (“organizing an association that infringes on the personhood and rights of citizens”) was dropped due to the statute of limitations. The prosecution had asked the court to send him down for twelve years, but instead the judge sentenced to him to eleven years in prison.

Ksenzhepolsky joined Vesna’s federal coordinating council in August 2021. According to him, by October–November of that year his involvement in the council had become “nominal” due to his work commitments. He was employed as a welding production specialist at the National Welding Control Agency and served as an aide to a deputy in the Tver Regional Legislative Assembly.

“I realized that the Vesna movement made a lot of noise but didn’t accomplish anything tangible,” Ksenzhepolsky said in court. “Meanwhile, I was involved in real institutional politics at the Legislative Assembly and could actually influence things—or at least try to.”

On paper, however, Ksenzhepolsky remained a member of Vesna until the summer of 2022.

Ksenzhepolsky is accused of posting on the movement’s Telegram channels, although, according to him, he had access to only one of them, “Tver Vesna,” which had sixteen subscribers. He handed over the password to the new administrator in November 2021, when he left the organization.

In court, Ksenzepolsky reiterated that he believes street protests in Russia are ineffective.

“I believe these actions are completely pointless and do more harm than good.”

In September 2022, when Russia announced a military mobilization, Ksenzhepolsky, according to his own testimony, was on holiday in Georgia but returned home—after Vesna had been declared an “extremist” organization.

“In any case, I know that we will ultimately be vindicated in the eyes of society, history, and the Last Judgment. After all, everything was forever, until it was no more. This regime will come to an end too, and within our lifetimes, something tells me. If not, then the Kingdom of Heaven is not a bad consolation prize,” said Ksenzhepolsky in his closing statement.

Mailing address for letters:

Bank account number for donations: 2200 2479 5715 1401

You can follow the latest news on the Telegram channel of Ksenzhepolsky’s support group.

Valentin Khoroshenin, 24 years old

A resident of Petersburg, Khoroshenin was charged with violating Article 212.1.1 (“repeatedly violating the law on public assemblies”) and Article 354.1.4 (“condoning Nazism”) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The charge that he had violated Article 239.2 of the Criminal Code was dropped due to the statute of limitations. The prosecution asked the court to send Khoroshenin to prison for eight years, but he was sentenced to six years and two months behind bars.

A co-founder of the now-shuttered Fogel lecture bar in Petersburg, Khoroshenin was the sole defendant who not only pleaded guilty to the charges but also testified against the other defendants in the case and many other Vesna activists.

The names mentioned by Valentin Khoroshenin in his testimony: Vladimir Arzhanov, Yekaterina Alexandrova, Makar Andreyev, Nikolai Artemenko, Anna Arkhipova, Yekaterina Bushkova, Alexander Vereshchagin, Yekaterina Goncharova, Timofei Gorodilov, Anastasia Gof, Lev Gyammer, Semyon Yerkin, Yevgeny Zateyev, Semyon Zakhariev, Anastasia Kadetova, Vladimir Kazachenko, Alexander Kashevarov, Gleb Kondratyev, Semyon Kochkin, Yan Ksenzhepolsky, Ilya Kursov, Maria Lakhina, Nikita Levkin, Bogdan Litvin, Andrei Lozitsky, Alexandra Lukyanenko, Yelizaveta Lyubavina (Sofya Manevich), Ilya Lyubimov, Timofei Martynchenko, Daria Mernenko, Anzhelika Mustafina, Anna Nazarova, Vasily Neustroyev, Maxim Potemkin, Konstantin Pokhilchuk, Kira Pushkareva, Lilia Safronova, Pavel Sinelnikov, Yevgenia Fedotova, Anastasia Filippova, Artur Kharitonov, Alexei Shvarts

Khoroshenin’s testimony came as a surprise to everyone in court. He requested that the testimony be heard in closed session and asked that the public and the press be removed from the courtroom, but the judge turned down his request.

Khoroshenin did not merely agree with the charge of “extremism.” He called Vesna “a sort of incubator for Navalny.” His testimony suggested that the movement’s branches were directly linked to the opposition politician’s field offices, where distinguished young activists would then “move up the ranks.” Khoroshenin mentioned the “grant support” that Vesna received, including from “undesirable organizations,” and complained that rank-and-file activists “spent the night in a back room, while Litvin bought himself a new apartment.”

“We systematically violated the law. We held protests and placed ourselves above the law. There were also slogans about undermining the country’s defense capabilities and justifying the use of violence. We organized events that violated existing laws but looked good on the surface,” Khoroshenin said in court.

“I have always believed that everything I am involved in should bring something positive to people. The Vesna movement was perhaps the only exception to this rule,” he argued, adding that he no longer supports any of the points in Vesna’s platform except for the one regarding support for “family and motherhood.”

Toward the end of his court testimony, Khoroshenin urged the other defendants to plead guilty—“to change their stance on the charges against them and set aside ideological pretense.”

“Don’t dig your own graves, colleagues!” he said.

In a letter from the detention center, Anna Arkhipova later quoted the words Khoroshenin had spoken after the hearing: “What really matters isn’t what actually happened, but how the investigator wrote it up.”

In his final statement, Khoroshenin lamented that his former comrades in Vesna had made him look like “some kind of Luntik,” once again acknowledged his guilt, asked for forgiveness “from society and especially from his family,” and voiced his hope that the court would allow him “to return to a normal life for constructive self-realization for the benefit of society.”

Mailing address for letters:

Bank account number for donations: 4476 2461 7307 7443

You can follow the latest news on the Telegram channel of Khoroshenin’s support group.

Source: Yelizaveta Nesterova and Pavel Vasiliev, “’What really matters isn’t what actually happened, but how the investigator wrote it up’: What you need to know about the Vesna movement, whose activists have been sentenced to up to 12 years in prison,” Mediazona, 7 April 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Alexander Skobov: Behind Bars in the USSR and Putin’s Russia

The number of Russians who find themselves behind bars for opposing the authorities who launched the war with Ukraine grows by the day. There are hundreds of political prisoners in the country. We try to remind our readers about these people every chance we get. Today, Mediazona’s David Frenkel tells the story of Alexander Skobov, 67, a historian from St Petersburg, a defendant in the last criminal case against ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’ in Soviet history, a convinced Marxist, and a veteran of the dissident movement, who after decades has found himself on a very familiar path: searches, arrest, psychiatric ward, jail.

Alexander Skobov is one of the most experienced political prisoners in Russia. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was twice sent to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment: the first time as an editor of samizdat, the second time for slogans in favour of political prisoners, which Skobov wrote on the walls of Leningrad houses.

Almost half a century later, in April 2024, the authorities came after him again. Skobov was accused of ‘justifying terrorism’ because of his post about the explosion on the Crimean Bridge and sent to a pre-trial detention centre. In protest, he refused to take his glasses and medication with him. Later, an article on participation in a ‘terrorist community’ was added to the charge, and Skobov was transferred from St Petersburg to Syktyvkar.

“We were left alone for a long time. The reasoning being: we’ll die out on our own. Or we’ll leave and live out the rest of our lives off the once acquired (quite deservedly) political and moral capital. The blow came to other people, most of them much younger,” he wrote from the pre-trial detention centre.

Skobov maintains an active correspondence in pre-trial detention. He discusses philosophical and political topics, his letters are even published in historical journals. Write to Alexander, argue with him, disagree with him, I’m sure it would be valuable to him. The only thing is that his wife asks that the letters to him be written in 18-point Sans Serif font. Skobov can’t even see his own texts well: he first drafts them on the back of used sheets of paper and then blindly transfers the texts to the reply form.

Address:

167028, г. Сыктывкар, поселок Верхний Чов, д. 99 , ФКУ СИЗО-1 УФСИН России по Республике Коми. Скобову Александру Валерьевичу 1957 года рождения

Please write letters in Russian, otherwise the prison censors won’t let them through. You can send letters online via a special services called PrisonMail.

You can also write in English, using the websites Letters Across Borders and Lifeline, two projects by OVD Info, a media outlet and human rights defense group.

Source: Mediazona, 29 November 2024. I lightly edited the text, above, for clarity’s sake. Featured image courtesy of the Moscow Times. ||| TRR

Would That the Tanks Were Pink and Fired Daisies

Varya Mikhailova
Facebook
February 13, 2022

I am quite troubled by statements on this topic, because it seems really pathetic to write from Russia that you are against war if you don’t do anything about it (and can’t even imagine what you can do), but it’s horrible to watch the video footage of tanks and realize that your country is doing this.

No matter what wing of the opposition we belong to, we are all responsible for this, and even if there is no more saber-rattling, we are all responsible for the fear that Russia sows in its midst so that none of the former Soviet countries can even think of relaxing and calmly building their own futures.

As a country, Russia is a straight-up abuser who cannot imagine that someone could live peacefully and happily without it, doing everything to prevent this. In this context, [Putin’s] remark about “Like it or don’t like it, [it’s your duty, my beauty]” is absolutely no accident.

The photo, by David Frenkel, shows a pink tank, a symbol of pacifism, which was not allowed to take part in the 2015 May Day demo [in Petersburg].

Translated by the Russian Reader

All in the Family

In his profile of badass Petersburg photojournalist David Frenkel, published today in the Globe and Mail, Anthony Feinstein focuses on Frenkel’s father (Alik, unnamed here) as the source of his moral courage and love of photography, not deigning to mention his equally badass mom (Lika) and badass wife (Varya). Or, for that matter, the “family business”: the St. Petersburg Jewish Community Center, one of the most incredible and welcoming places in the city, which Alika and Lika have run for many, many years. I miss all of them and the Center more than I can say.

Below the quotation from Feinstein’s article I’ve posted links to David’s, Lika’s and Varya’s numerous appearances over the years on this website. Thanks to Lika (Leokadia) Frenkel for the heads-up. ||| TRR

David Frenkel and Varya Mikhailova at their wedding on 23 October 2020. Lika and Alik Frenkel look on proudly in the background. Photo courtesy of Varya Mikhailova’s Facebook page

That Mr. Frenkel came to find himself with a camera recording voting irregularities may be traced in large measure to his outrage at Mr. Putin’s increasingly dictatorial rule and the unravelling of the rule of law in Russia today. “For some people in Russia, it has become uncomfortable just to do your job,” he said. “Being a scientist, it’s not enough. You do your job, you do it well, but it’s not enough to be a good person any more.”

[…]

In trying to understand Mr. Frenkel’s evolution from physicist to photographer, it is helpful to look at his early, formative influences. His family is Jewish, and his father is a Yiddish scholar and translator who photographed his suppressed religion and culture during the Communist era. Jewish religious holidays were forbidden, and therefore celebrated secretly. Mr. Frenkel’s father documented this underground resistance to Soviet orthodoxy – activities that came with their own risks. For example, his work provides a pictorial record of the life of refuseniks, Jews who were persecuted by the state for wanting to emigrate to Israel.

___________________

David Frenkel: The Year 2020 in Pictures

David Frenkel
Facebook
December 30, 2020

I had a poor year shooting photographs: there were few events in [Petersburg], and I missed some important stories due to my arm being broken. But in the end, it seems that the photos still piled up.

January 19, 2020. Activists of the Vesna Movement say goodbye to the Russia Constitution near the Constitutional Court in Petersburg.

January 31, 2020. Authorities analyze the debris after the Sport and Concert Complex (SKK) in Petersburg collapses.

February 1, 2020. Police detain a man for a picketing against proposed amendments to the Russian Constitution on Senate Square in Petersburg.

February 9, 2020. A solo picket in Penza before the verdict in the Network Case was announced.

February 10, 2020. Defendants in the Network Case after the verdict was announced in the Penza Regional Court.

Continue reading “David Frenkel: The Year 2020 in Pictures” →

Reverse Charges

Instead of filing charges against the police officer who broke Mediazona journalist David Frenkel’s arm at Polling Station No. 318 in Petersburg during the recent sham “referendum,” the police have decided to charge David Frenkel with “disobeying a police officer” (Article 19.3 of the administrative offenses code), “interfering with an election commission’s work” (Article 5.69), and “violating the self-isolation regime [coronavirus shelter-in-place rules]” (Article 20.6.1). || TRR

charges
Varya Mikhailova
Facebook
July 17, 2020

Speaking of how we are doing and what has been happening with us. When I found out that David’s arm had been broken, the first thing I was worried about was not his arm or his health, but the possibility of criminal proceedings against him. Not because he did anything wrong or broke the law, but because if you encounter violence from the police, expect to be charged under Article 318 of the criminal code.* And while everyone was calling me and asking about his health, I was thinking only one thing: maybe this is not the worst yet. And today, instead of apologies and criminal proceedings against the officer [who broke Frenkel’s arm], we received this letter of happiness. Well heck, thanks for not charging him with a criminal offense!

* “Life- or health-threatening violence against a government official or their relatives in connection with the performance of their official duties is punishable by imprisonment for a term of up to ten years.”

Chronicle of Current Vote Rigging

A Chronicle of Current Vote Rigging: The Russian National Referendum Through the Eyes of Observers of Petersburg
July 16, 2020

This film by Observers of Petersburg shows how such how a high turnout (74.7%) and outcome (77.7% “yes” votes) were attained in Petersburg during the 2020 Russian national referendum.

Spoiler alert! All this was made possible by six days of early voting, which were impossible to monitor.

Time codes:
00:00 Opening
00:59 How will the 2020 vote be remembered?
02:44 Coronavirus: voting in a pandemic
06:12 Early voting
09:28 Voting at workplaces
13:20 Voting rolls
17:49 David Frenkel’s story: how a journalist’s arm was broken at a polling station
21:35 Observers from the Public Chamber
26:09 Vote counting
31:42 Honest polling station commissions
35:24 What will happen next? The Russian national referendum’s impact on future elections

Featuring:
Anastasia Romanova
Maria Moldavskaya
Dmitry Neuymin
Konstantin Korolyov
Olga Dmitrieva
Galina Kultiasova
Mikhail Molochnikov
Polina Kostyleva
Olga Khmelevskaya
Maria Chebykina
Natalia Yegorushkina
David Frenkel
Ivan Kvasov

The film was produced by Yulia and Yevgeny Selikhov.
Thanks to iz0 for doing the animation.

Sign a petition against multi-day voting.

Thanks to Leokadia Frenkel for the link. The video’s title is an allusion to the Soviet-era samizdat periodical Chronicle of Current Events. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader

УИК 40 СПб Counting the votes at Polling Station No. 40 in Petersburg. Photo courtesy of Deutsche Welle

Beat the Press

While looking for an original Telegram post (cited and translated, below) by Pavel Chikov, head of the Agora group of human rights lawyers, I found these more recent entries. The latest (at the bottom of the screenshot, above) informed Chikov’s readers that Agora attorney Leonid Solovyov was on his way to the apartment of activist, artist and Mediazona publisher Pyotr Verzilov, which was being searched by police and security forces for the sixth (!) time in recent weeks. Meanwhile, according to the entry above it, Agora lawyers would be representing three people at three different court hearings today: reporter Mikhail Benyash, convicted and fined for, allegedly, “assaulting a police officer” (Benyash is appealing his conviction); Lyubov Kudryashova, a 55-year-old environmentalist indicted on charges of “inciting terrorism”; and Azat Miftakhov, a young mathematician charged with breaking the window at a United Russia party office in Moscow. It’s all in a day’s work.

Andrey Loshak
Facebook
July 7, 2020

Firs they grabbed the activists, now they’re jailing the journalists. When they come for you, there won’t be anyone to defend you.

Pavel Chikov wrote this on Telegram:

Attacks on the media in the summer of 2020 (disturbing)

1. Pyotr Verzilov, publisher of Mediazona, has home raided by police, is jailed for an administrative offense, and charged with a crime.

2. Svetlahna Prokopyeva, a journalist with Echo of Moscow in Pskov, is convicted of “condoning terrorism.”

3. Ivan Safronov, a former reporter for Kommersant and Vedomosti, is detained on charges of “treason.”

4. Police search the home of Taisiya Bekbulatova, editor-in-chief of Kholod Media.

5. Ilya Azar, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta, is jailed for an administrative offense.

6. Journalists (including Tatyana Felgengauer, Alexander Plyushchev, Sergei Smirnov, Anna Zibrova, Alexander Chernykh, Olga Churakova, Elena Chernenko, Kira Dyuryagina, and Nikita Gorin) detained for holding solo pickets in solidarity with Azar.

7. Management at the [liberal business] newspaper Vedomosti is reshuffled.

8. Policemen assault David Frenkel, a correspondent for Mediazona.

Thanks to Anna Tereshkina for the link. Translated by the Russian Reader

Leokadia Frenkel: How to Defeat Russia’s Ruling Party in Your Own Neighborhood

“I Realized They Were Getting Ready to Throw the Election”: A Petersburg Woman Talks About How She Fought Three Days to Have the Real Vote Tally Confirmed
Leokadia Frenkel is a member of the election commission in Petersburg’s Vladimirsky Municipal District, where not a single United Russia candidate was elected
Sofia Volyanova
TJournal
September 12, 2019

Three days after Russia’s nationwide election day on September 8, the results of the municipal district council races in Petersburg had not been officially announced. In four districts where ruling United Russia party candidates did not win a majority of seats on the councils, the election commissions postponed their final meetings. In the Vladimirsky Municipal District, all the ruling party’s candidates had lost, according to preliminary vote tallies. The Yabloko Party had won twelve seats, while five seats had gone to independent candidates, and three seats to A Just Russia.

At some of the polling stations where opposition candidates were leading, election officials decided to recount the votes. As a consequence, United Russia candidates suddenly took the lead, while independent candidates were robbed of critical votes.

Leokadia Frenkel, a voting member of the Vladimirsky Municipal District Election Commission, told TJournal how she and the winning candidates prevented such vote rigging in her own district. She was forced to sleep in the district council building and was assaulted by the election commission’s deputy chairwoman, who attempted to lock Frenkel in an office.

__________________________________________________

On election day, I arrived at the Central District administration building, where our municipal district election commission is located, at seven in the morning. We invalidated ballots, then I got the papers I had to take to the different polling stations and I delivered them. I communicated with the polling station election commissions and monitored what was happening. At eight in the evening, I returned to the Central District building, where we invalidated the rest of the ballots that needed invalidating.

We did not receive a single complaint during the voting and the vote counts. Everything was completely fair and square. I had no complaints with the commission chair.

“The polling station election commission chairs will go with me, and we will enter the results into GAS [automated state elections system],” she said.

But then, during the night, someone told us all the election commission chairs had been sent home and no one had entered their vote tallies into GAS because it was down. We learned this completely by accident. I asked the secretary of the municipal district election commission what had happened, why the vote tallies had not been entered into GAS, and why the commission chairs had been sent home. She said something was broken, but we checked and nothing was broken. They were playing for time: they needed an excuse to do a recount. That was when we realized the fix was in and we spent the night in the administration building.

Why did I stay there? I was afraid they would convene the municipal district election commission without me. I wanted to be there and register my dissenting opinion if there was a recount.

The winning candidates slept there, too, because the ballots had been packed up and stored in the basement. They were making sure the ballots were not stolen. There were advisory and voting members of the polling station commissions who had done their jobs honestly and wanted to prevent electoral fraud.

The commission had left in the wee hours of September 9, saying it would reconvene at four in the afternoon. But it did not show up at four in the afternoon. We kept waiting, finally filing complaints with the Territorial Election Commission and the Central Election Commission.

We spent the whole day in the building. The very nice, hospital head of the Central District talked to us and gave us chairs so we would not have to lie on the floor. Our friends supplied us with food and water.

We spent over twenty fours in that building.

The head of the district communicated the City Election Commission’s decision to us and said all the chairs of the polling station election commissions would be gathering and all the final vote tallies would be entered into GAS.

When the chair of the commission showed up, she summoned all the polling station chairs. At nine in the evening, they started entering the vote tallies into GAS. The results were entered correctly: there was no vote rigging.

But the fact is that the chair of our municipal district election commission did not come and pick up the results. First, she said they were not ready, although they were ready. She was supposed to collect them and hold a final meeting of the commission to confirm the vote tally and the list of winning candidates. Many independent candidates and new people won seats on the Vladimirsky Municipal District Council. No one from United Russia was among the victors, so maybe they were angry or somehow affiliated with the municipal district council.

**Leokadia Frenkel sleeping outside the office of the deputy head of the Central District**

After the vote tallies were entered into the GAS, I went home and the next day I was busy with my own affairs. But the final sitting of the commission had not been held nor had the documents been collected. I telephoned the chair and asked what the matter was. So I would not worry, she said the meeting would be held and everything would be fair and square.

At nine in the morning on September 11, the candidates telephoned me and said that certain polling station commission chairs had shown up at the municipal council for some unknown purpose. So I also went to the municipal district election commission, once again asking when our final session would be held and why the paperwork, which had long been ready, had not been picked up.

The deputy chair was the only one in the office, so I asked her. I saw a paper on her desk with no date or registry number. It was a complaint, filed by United Russia candidate Igor Kartsev, who requested a recount. I realized they were getting ready to throw the election. Instead of getting ready for the final meeting, they were grooming people affiliated with them to file complaints requesting a recount, as was happening in other municipal districts, in order to steal the victory from the independent candidates.

I took the complaint in order to photograph it when the deputy chair attacked me from behind. She tried to snatch the letter from me and destroy it. There were many people present, including the candidates and voting members of our commission. One of them grabbed the complaint, which the deputy chair tried to snatch from me, in order to save it from destruction. He photographed it and posted it on social media.

Зампред икмо Владимирский напала на чпрг от яблока @likafrenk, чтобы та не смогла увидеть документы и жалобы с целью пересчёта. Чпрг удалось все же сбежать, хотя ее не выпускали, но зампред теперь утверждает, что это напали на нее, уехала на скорой. pic.twitter.com/GJr3Lv8xC0
— Dave Frenkel (@merr1k) September 11, 2019

Vladimirsky Municipal District Election Commission deputy chair attacked @likafrenk, a voting member of the commission from Yabloko, to stop her from seeing documents and complaints that would trigger a recount. The voting member managed to escape despite the fact that the deputy chair tried not to let her out, but now the deputy chair claims it was she who was attacked. She was taken away in an ambulance.

The deputy chair tried to lock me in the office and prevent from getting out by holding the door shut. There was a slight tussle: I wedged my foot in the doorway, but she tried to hit me with the door so I could not get out. When she let go of the door, I escaped. I filed a complaint with the City Election Commission, explaining that I had found a strange document. I also wrote that I was afraid, since the final commission meeting had not been held, that they were planning to throw the election.

I filed a complaint with the police about the attack and the fact that the municipal district election commission had tried to destroy the documents I had turned up. And I went to the emergency room and had the doctors there document the injury I suffered when the deputy chair hit me with the door to keep me looked in her office. I ended up with a bruise on my leg, of course.

The commission is located in the building where the municipal council has its offices. The police and an ambulance were summoned. Allegedly, either someone hit someone else or I hit someone. But I could not have hit anyone because I was on the other side of the door, in an office where there was nowhere else. Complaints were filed to the effect that I had, allegedly, absconded with certain documents, but I had not stolen them. I was in the commission office and the deputy chair would not let me out. I could not have stolen the documents.

Also, the deputy chairwoman filed a complaint that someone had hit her in the hallway or something to that effect. She also had her alleged injuries documented at the emergency room, and she was taken to hospital.

I don’t know what is going on here, but it all began when the incumbent council members got a look at the vote tallies. When they realized they had lost in all the districts, they postponed the final commission meetings and the announcements of the results. First, they put off entering the results into GAS, but when the actual, correct results were entered into the system, they tried to put off holding the final commission meetings.

Holding a recount is one way of switching out ballots and substituting them with fake ballots. But they still have to be signed by two commission members, at least. They want to switch the ballots and recount the votes. What are they fighting for? They want a majority on the council. They want to prevent the independent candidates for gaining a majority on the council and then electing their own chair.

Tomorrow is the last day when they can hold the final, wrap-up session, and now social media are reporting that, allegedly, the municipal district election commissions are going to be meeting at the Central District administration building and, allegedly, the election results will be confirmed in keeping with the vote tallies that the polling station election commissions arrived at fair and square.

**Leokadia Frenkel. Photo by David Frenkel**

It is now the evening of September 11, and a rather large number of people have gathered outside the offices of the Vladimirsky Municipal District Council, including the winning independent candidates, commission members outraged by the fact that the authorities have been trying to throw the election. These people have said they will not go home because the authorities are trying to throw the election.

The winning candidates spent the whole day picketing the municipal district election commission and demanding the immediate confirmation of the results. But just now the police detained someone here. [It later transpired that a young woman conducting a solo picket protesting vote rigging had been detained. She did not have a local residence permit, so she was put into a police car, but she was released after the police checked her return tickets — TJournal.]

I came here to see what was going on. Everything is closed, but people have gathered here all the same. The candidates called local residents who signed petitions to get them on the ballot and told them the authorities were trying to steal their votes, and so these residents have also come.

The candidates are going to stand guard at the Central District administration building. As soon as they see that the chair has shown up, I will also run over there. If a recount is demanded, a report will be issued. I will send a dissenting opinion to the City Election Commission and the Central Election Commission and tell them there was vote rigging and a recount.

All the rough stuff lies ahead of us. Now, however, I don’t see anything rough happening. I see lots of young people who are determined to fight. They are proactive and positive. Of course, it would be a blow to me if everything into which we have put so much effort is declared null and void, if there is a recount and they steal the victory. But we plan to fight.

I have only positive thoughts. I did not expect the opposition to win, but win they did in all the districts. This is the first time when people who deserve to win have won. In this sense, it was fair and square. There was nothing like this in past elections. Nobody wanted to vote. Suddenly young people— the candidates, their friends and their aides—appeared on the scene, and it’s great. I have seen another world, a world of young people.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Crossing Jordan: Day Three of the Network Trial

Jordan and Maidan: The Network Trial, Day Three
Sergei Kagermazov
OVD Info
April 11, 2019

ovd1 Yuli Boyarshinov in court. Photo by David Frenkel. Courtesy of OVD Info

The left-wing radical community Network existed, but its young anarchists were training to fend off attacks by ultra-rightists when and if a coup like the one that took place in Ukraine kicked off in Russia. In any case, this was the takeaway message of the testimony given by defendant Yuli Boyarshinov. Echo of Moscow in Petersburg correspondent Sergei Kagermazov describes day three of the Network trial for OVD Info.

The Guerrilla School
The courtroom at the 224th Garrison Military Court in Petersburg is unable to accommodate everyone. Some members of the public are left standing on the far side of the metal detector. The bailiffs claim there is no room and do not let people into the hallway even.

Later, it transpires that several university students who had not heard of the case wormed their way into the courtroom. Someone asked them to attend the hearing, and so reporters from Novaya Gazeta, TASS, and Rosbalt are unable to get into the courtroom. Subsequently, one of the students was identified as a member of the local branch of United Russia’s Young Guard (Molodaya gvardiya). Fontanka.ru would write that the FSB were behind the restricted access to the courtroom.

The highlight of day three of the trial is defendant Yuli Boyarshinov’s testimony. He pleaded guilty and moved to have his case tried separately under a special procedure involving elimination of the evidence phase, but the court denied his motion.

According to Boyarshinov, he knew he was an antifascist approximately since 2009. Six years later, he met another person accused [and convicted] in the case, Igor Shishkin. Shiskin also pleaded guilty, made a deal with case investigators, and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

“Around 2015 or 2016, I came to think a violent coup was possible in Russia. On the internet, I learned about radical right-wing groups planing something like what happened in Ukraine in 2014,” says Boyarshinov, who speaks as if he were reading the case file aloud.

People ordinarily do no talk like this.

Boyarshinov insists he was interested only in self-defense in the event radical nationalists emerged in Russia. He learned to handle weapons at the Guerrilla Club, a place in Petersburg affiliated with the DOSAAF [Voluntary Society for Assisting the Army, Air Force and Navy]. Other suspects in the Network case, whom Boyarshinov identified as Yegor and Polina, also took instruction there. Boyarshinov cannot recall their surnames. The young people purchased mock-ups of Kalashnikov rifles and practiced with them. However, their only goal was self-defense. Boyarshinov emphasizes the young people were not planning any attacks.

It was also then the suspect [sic] met Alexandra Aksyonova, who introduced herself as Olya. Aksyonova is the wife of another defendant in the case, Viktor Filinkov, who is being tried together with Boyarshinov. The young woman is currently in Finland, where her application for political asylum is under review. NTV has reported Aksyonova was one of the leaders of the Network and alleged she had ties with Ukrainian nationalists.

As for the Guerrilla Club, it was also a place where future Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic volunteer fighters trained, as well as the Swedes responsible for the bomb attacks in Gothenburg in 2016 and 2017. But none of these people had yet piqued the FSB’s curiosity. When Filinkov asks whether Boyarshinov knew numerous nationalists trained at the Guerrilla Club, Judge Roman Muranov disallows the question as having no bearing on the case.

Jordan 1
Boyarshinov also testifies that, in the early summer of 2016, he was invited to a meeting in the Priozersk District of Leningrad Region. The meeting was attended by Yegor, Polina, and Shishkin, as well as Anton and Pasha, Network members from Penza (the men’s real names were Maxim Ivankin and Dmitry Pchelintsev, who are two more defendants in the case), and two other people. Since the Petersburgers did not know the people from Penza, they also used pseudonyms. Boyarshinov introduced himself as Yura, Yegor as Matvei, and Shishkin as Maxim.

At the meeting, the young men from Penza showed the others a document they called “The Code.” It was a draft project for a community called the Network. Boyarshinov says “The Code”{ ran to around fifteen pages, but only a couple of pages were read aloud to him. The case file contains a document resembling “The Code,” but that is the problem: it only resembles it. Boyarshinov was able to read the entire text of “The Code” only during the pretrial investigation. The young men from Penza said [at the meeting in the Priozersk District] they wanted to encourage the cooperation of different groups involved in self-defense.

ovd2 Yuli Boyarshinov in court. Photo by David Frenkel. Courtesy of OVD Info

“So, formally, I joined the Network community,” Boyarshinov admits.

Due to security considerations, it was decided to identify the Petersburg group as “Jordan 1.”

Subsequently, members of the Network would choose different specialties for themselves. Since he had studied demolition and explosives at the Guerrilla Club, Boyarshinov became the group’s sapper.

Another meeting was held in western or northwestern Moscow Region in the woods. Six people attended, including members from Moscow. A third meeting took place in the winter of 2016 at Shishkin’s mother’s dacha. There were also several meetings in the autumn of 2016.

It was at one of these meetings that Boyarshinov met Filinkov. After Boyarshinov has testified, the people in the courtroom learn that, according to the case file, the FSB was already staking out both defendants at the time.

In February 2017, another meeting was held in a rented flat in Petersburg. Shishkin did not come to the meeting, but Filinkov, the Muscovites, and Pchelintsev and Ivankin were present. It was at this meeting that what the FSB identifies as “the minutes” was left behind, finding its way into the case file.

“I cannot corroborate what is described in the minutes of the meeting: I did not take notes. But the description seems more or less accurate,” says Boyarshinov.

When he read the minutes of the meeting, he realized the Network had decided not just to learn self-defense, but to try and destroy the regime.

“I don’t believe in violence, in violence against state authorities. I am sorry I was in such a community,” Boyarshinov repents.

Boyarshinov was detained by police. He claims to have found the smoke powder [with which police apprehended him] on the the roof of a building, since he worked as an industrial climber. He found the powder interesting, since he was studying demolition and explosives. When it was reported Pchelintsev had been detained, Boyarshinov decided to throw the powder away. He left his house and was caught by police.

“Russia’s Falling Apart, We Have to Leave”
The next to testify is Stepan Prokofiev, in whose flat Filinkov lived while he was looking for a place to rent. Prokofiev’s flat was searched by the FSB after they detained Filinkov.

The defendant [Filinkov] immediately points out Prokofiev might commit perjury and slander him.

“The FSB coerced the witness,” argues Filinkov.

[On the day of the search at his flat], Prokofiev was awoken, forced to lie face down on the floor, and handcuffed. He would spend the night at a police station. When Filinkov’s defense attorney, Vitaly Cherkasov, asks whether police explained to him why spent the night at a police station, Judge Muranov disallows the question as having no bearing on the case.

ovd3 At the courthouse: members of the public holding pieces of paper inscribed with the message “NTV lies.” Photo by David Frenkel. Courtesy of OVD Info

“Filinkov went to Ukraine to see his wife. When he got back, he told me he had met someone who had fought in Donbas while he was in Kyiv. Filinkov told me a couple of times that Russia was falling apart and we had to leave. He said it would happen after the [March 2018 Russian] presidential election. He would talk about leaving for Georgia or Ukraine after this happened, because it was cheaper to live there,” Prokofiev recounts.

Filinkov counters that he never mentioned talking with anyone who fought in Donbas.

Prosecutor Yekaterina Kachurina is more interested in two guns that were legally registered in Filinkov’s wife’s name. However, it follows from the testimonies of Filinkov and the witness that, for the time being, there is nothing for the prosecution to get its hooks into. The papers for the guns were in order, and the guns were kept in a safe.

The day ends with an attack by an NTV crew on the attorneys and parents of the defendants. However, members of the pubic cover the lens of NTV’s camera with pieces of paer inscribed with the message “NTV lies” and rattle the young woman holding the microphone by peppering her with absurd questions. Meanwhile, the defense attorneys are able to escape, while the parents get into taxis and quickly quite the scene.

_____________________________________________________________________

Vitaly Cherkasov
Facebook
April 10, 2019

Today, defendant Yuli Boyarshinov, while generally admitting his guilt, did not corroborate the prosecution’s position.

The prosecution has insisted that the members of the Network terrorist community, via “direct involvement in training sessions” that took place in St. Petersburg, Leningrad Region, and Penza Region, mastered “tactical methods of seizing buildings, facilities, and individuals” in order to “forcibly capture and eliminate” state authorities and “change the constitutional order.”

When examined in court, Boyarshinov corroborated the testimony he had given during the pretrial investigation: the goal of the training sessions was to master the skills of self-defense against ultra-nationalists. Defense, not offense!

[…]

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He Admitted His Guilt But Did Nothing Wrong: Yuli Boyarshinov’s Testimony at Network Trial Gives Prosecution’s Case No Trump Cards
Тatyana Likhanova
Novaya Gazeta in Petersburg
April 11, 2019

The authorities decided to restrict access to the trial of the so-called terrorist community Network, which is an organization now officially banned in Russia.

The high-profile case is being heard by a circuit panel of judges from the Moscow District Military Court at the Garrison Military Court in Petersburg. The hearings have been held in a cramped courtroom with two rows of benches accommodating ten people each. It is thus out of wildly out proportion with the heightened attention paid to the case by the public and the media.

On Tuesday, journalists from several periodicals appealed to the Moscow District Military Court to provide them with normal working conditions. On Wednesday morning, the approaches to the courtroom were occupied by groups of students from the Chemical and Pharmaceutical University and Herzen University’s law school.

The former said they had been sent there by a university official responsible for military training and patriotic education, while the latter claimed they had come to witness a high-profile case they had long been following, although they could not answer a single question about what was at stake in the case.

Among those crowded around the door to the courtroom was a young man bearing a resemblance to Vlad Girmanov, secretary of the military and patriotic club at the Pharmaceutical University, as well as people who had picketed the Petersburg office of [Russian opposition politician and anti-corruption crusader] Alexei Navalny.

nip1 Yuli Boyarshinov arriving at the courthouse. Photo by Elena Lukyanova. Courtesy of Novaya in Petersburg

The influx of “extras” was an excuse to limit the access of the press and the public to the trial. The bailiffs refused to let correspondents from Deutsche Welle, TASS, Fontanka.ru. Bumaga, Rosbalt, and other media outlets into the courthouse to cover the trial, as well as Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission member Yekaterina Kosarevskaya. Complaints were filed with the head of the St. Petersburg bailiff service and the chairs of the Petersburg Garrison Military Court and the Moscow District Military Court. They were asked to verify the legality of the actions taken by the bailiffs and secure a courtroom large enough to accommodate everyone interested in witnessing this high-profile case. According to Fontanka.ru, the order to restrict access to the courtroom was made by FSB officers, who thus bypassed the top officials in the Petersburg judicial system.

The hearing opened with testimony by Yuli Boyarshinov, who has pleaded guilty. He said he had been an antifascist since 2009. In the winter of 2015–2016, he concluded that riots involving violence by nationalist groups (“along the lines of the events in Ukraine in 2014”) were possible in Russia. In order to acquire self-defense skills, Boyarshinov attended a month-long course at the Guerrilla Tactical and Firearms Training Center. (Its website says it is affiliated with the DOSAAF [Voluntary Society for Assisting the Army, Air Force and Navy] and “teaches civilians survival skills in local armed conflicts, social unrest, and martial law.”) The course included instruction in handling firearms, surviving in the woods, first aid, radio communication, and mines and explosives.

Boyarshinov attended the classes with his friend Yegor and a young woman identified as Polina. In addition to lectures, training sessions were held at a shooting range near the village of Olgino, during which Boyarshinov used a mock-up of a Kalashnikov assault rifle he acquired. Alexandra Askyonova, co-defendant Viktor Filinkov’s future wife, also went to the shooting range.

In the summer of 2016, Boyarshinov was invited to a meeting with “guys from Penza who were also interested in self-defense.” The meeting took place in the woods of Leningrad Region.

“We made bonfires, discussed different social problems and issues of self-defense, and trained with dummy weapons,” he said.

The attendees used fictitious names because they did not yet trust each other. One of the four attendees would later be identified as Dmitry Pchelintsev, another as Maxim Ivankin.

According to Boyarshinov, the Penza attendees talked about a project provisionally entitled the Network, designed to unite different groups for self-defense classes.

They presented their vision of the organization in a manifest of sorts, entitled “The Network Code,” one or two pages of which were read aloud.

Boyarshinov claimed he did not take what he heard seriously, and when someone later sent him the entire text of “The Code,” he did not bother to read it from cover to cover. He read the full text, nearly twenty pages, only when he was recently reviewing the criminal investigation case file. He was unable to corroborate whether what he read was identical to what had been sent to him earlier, but he said it seemed similar.

The document also outlines possible areas for studying self-defense skills: tactician, medic, signalman, and other roles, with no reference to specific people.

“These areas correspond to the disciplines I studied during the course at the Guerrilla Center,” Boyarshinov noted.

nip2 Yuli Boyarshinov’s father Nikolai in the courtroom. Photo by Elena Lukyanova. Courtesy of Novaya Gazeta in Petersburg

The second meeting that summer took place in the Moscow Region. Several young people from the capital joined the attendees of the first meeting. Boyarshinov remembered only that one of them was named Lev. There were more conversations around campfires and training sessions with dummy weapons.

In the winter of 2016–2017, the group traveled to Igor Shishkin’s mother’s dacha, spending their time in much the same way.

Boyarshinov stressed they worked only on fending off attacks during all the meetings and training sessions: they never practiced raids and assaults. Political issues were not discussed, and there was no talk of drilling for terrorist-like crimes.

Shishkin, who made a deal with case investigators, also noted the absence of violent actions during the training when he described the trip to his mother’s dacha in his testimony.

Boyarshinov corroborated that Filinkov did not attend the first two meetings. Aksyonova introduced Boyarshinov to Filinkov in the autumn of 2016. Filinkov took part in a couple of training sessions at the firing range near Olgino. One dealt with first aid and evacuating the wounded, while the second focused on fending off attacks of VIPs [sic] by employing the methods of private security companies. No knives or firearms were used during the training sessions, only dummy machine guns.

As for the group’s allegedly strict conspiratorial methods, among which case investigators identified the use of messengers and encrypted correspondence, Boyarshinov explained they had been his usual means of communication in the years prior to his involvement with the group.

The third meeting with the young men from Penza and several Muscovites took place in a rented flat in Petersburg in February and March 2017. In the case file, this meeting has been identified as a “national congress of the Network terrorist community.”

Boyarshinov, on the contrary, described a two- or three-day meeting, involving approximately a dozen people. They discussed a little of everything, from music to social, environmental and antifascist events. Filinkov was in attendance, but Boyarshinov could not remember him giving a report, showing any initiative or shouldering any responsibilities for further action.

Boyarshinov could not say who organized the meeting and who kept the minutes of the meeting. (A printed file entitled “Minutes of the Congress” was entered into physical evidence.) He could not corroborate whether Filinkov was present the entire time or whether he came and went, since he had himself had come to and gone from the meeting. As far as he could remember, “The Network Code” was also discussed.

However, some of those present said the group should prepare vigorously to fend off potential violent actions when circumstances in Russia deteriorated, while others had advocated “provoking actions themselves,” Boyarshinov recalled uncertainly.

Only after carefully reading the redaction of “The Network Code” provided to him by case investigators did Boyarshinov discover “it had been proposed to establish combat cells and target the authorities.”

“I have never espoused terrorism and I am sorry I wound up in this community,” he added.

However, Boyarshinov was unable to clarify who he believed had authored the document, how its contents were regarded by any of his current co-defendants, and whether it had been backed by someone specifically.

UPDATE
The next day, April 11, the hearing started nearly two hours late. (Allegedly, the armed escort bringing the defendants to court had got stuck in traffic, although it takes fifteen minutes to drive from the remand prison to the courthouse.)

The hearing was brief. The court heard the testimony of the two janitors who had served as official witnesses during the search of Filinkov’s place of residence. The presiding judge then announced the trial was adjourned until May 14.

One explanation for such a long adjournment is the reluctance of Petersburg investigators to wind the case up before the scandal surrounding the lead investigator in the main part of the Network case, Valery Tokarev, a senior investigator in the FSB’s Penza Region office, has been cleared up.

The previous day’s evening news broadcast on state TV channel Russia 24 featured a segment on fugitive businessman Alexei Shmatko.

Shmatko, who complained he was tortured by Tokarev, has been granted political asylum in Great Britain. (The segment starts at the fifty-minute mark.)

This was not the first time the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company had discussed the vicissitudes of this Penza businessman’s career. Shmatko had been on federal business ombudsman Boris Titov’s list of fugitive Russian businessmen who had voiced a desire to return home. But Tokarev’s name had never been mentioned on the air before. (Although Shmatko claims he had mentioned it during previous TV interviews.)

This time round, the presenter on state television was insistent, encouraging the businessman to dot his i’s and cross his t’s. Who had bribed him? What was the reason?

“He subjected me to torture,” Shmatko said, specifying his charges against Tokarev, “and accepted a bribe from me to release me from remand prison.”

Shmatko complained he had informed the Russian Investigative Committee about this incident in a written statement, but they “had not batted an eye.” He also assured the news presenter he was willing to return to Russia if his case were transferred to the feds, investigated thoroughly, and Senior Investigator Tokarev were arrested.

If this happened, Shmatko would return to Russia for Tokarev’s trial and testify against him.

The interview with Shmatko was chockablock with quotations from the President’s Address to the Federal Assembly on the need to criminalize illegal investigations and punish those responsible for launching them.

On April 10, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, speaking in the Federation Council, reported the number of corrupt FSB officers who had been outed had more than doubled. He also drew attention to “egregious cases of cruelty toward inmates.”

Three defendants in the Network case in Penza—Dmitry Pchelintsev, Ilya Shakursky, and Arman Sagynbayev—complained they had been tortured with electric shocks in an attempt to force them to incriminate themselves and others, including the Petersburg defendants.

Translated by the Russian Reader. You can find links to my previous coverage of the Network case here.