Olga Timofeeva

A Russian teenager, Arseny Turbin, will celebrate his seventeenth birthday in a juvenile correctional colony in the Perm region, where he has been sentenced to five years in custody.

He is accused of distributing anti-Putin leaflets in 2023, allegedly under the direction of handlers from the Freedom of Russia Legion—a group banned in Russia. However, the schoolboy admitted to distributing them but told the court he acted out of his personal convictions, not at someone else’s behest. The FSB also claims that Turbin completed a “questionnaire in Telegram” to join a terrorist organization and sent it through an unspecified method—a claim Arseny denies.

Human rights defenders from the group “Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial,” after reviewing Turbin’s case, recognized him as a political prisoner:

The case against the minor Turbin is politically motivated and aimed at intimidating society as a whole.

It is often said in Russia that writing to political prisoners is merely symbolic, an empty gesture. But as many “prisoners of conscience” have said—and as Arseny’s mother confirms—letters from both loved ones and strangers help sustain them through the hardest days of confinement. We hope for active participation from residents of Perm Krai and all compassionate people.

Address for letters and cards to Arseny Turbin:

Турбину Арсению 19.08.2008 г.р.
Адрес: 614512, Пермский край, с. Гамово, ул. Свободы, д. 1, ФКУ Пермская воспитательная колония ГУФСИН России по Пермскому краю.

Please write letters, cards, and the address only in Russian.

Read more: The Arseny Turbin Case.

The Leninsky District Court of Perm has remanded Leonid Melekhin in pretrial detention. Previously, Melekhin was denied political asylum in the United States and deported from the country.

In Russia, a criminal case has been opened against the Perm resident under the article on justifying terrorism. The specific charges against him remain unknown. At the request of the FSB investigator, he is held in custody until September 25.

Leonid Melekhin applied for political asylum in the United States last summer after crossing the US-Mexico border but was refused. He spent several months in a US immigration detention center. After the court upheld the denial of his asylum claim, he was deported.

Before leaving Russia, Melekhin, an active civic figure, was repeatedly held administratively liable for participating in protest actions. In June 2023, he held a solo picket in Perm with a sign reading “Freedom for Navalny.” He was detained, taken to a police station for questioning, and then released.

In 2024, Melekhin was declared wanted and later added to the list of “terrorists and extremists” by Rosfinmonitoring.

Who is Leonid Melehin?

Dzerzhinsky District Court of Perm has arrested former director of the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, Nailya Allakhverdieva, in absentia. She has been placed on the international wanted list, Meduza reported today.

A criminal case for insulting the religious feelings of believers (Part 1 of Article 148 of the Russian Criminal Code), triggered by several works from the museum’s collection, was opened against the ex-director of PERMM in March this year. According to the investigation, Nailya Allakhverdieva “understood that the works might offend believers, yet allowed their free display.” Notably, these works include Tatiana Anoshina’s Blue Cities, Sergey Gorshkov’s Angel with a Trumpet, and Konstantin Zvezdochetov’s Paradisi, which were exhibited at the museum in 2011–2012.

Everyone in Perm — young and old alike — knows that since almost the museum’s inception, Nailya Allakhverdieva has been the brain and driving force behind the unique PERMM project, renowned far beyond Perm and Russia for its avant-garde creative art practices. Thanks to her, PERMM is not some provincial institution but one of Russia’s leading museums in its field. How is the news of Nailya Allakhverdieva being declared wanted compatible with all this?! — co-founder of the “Perm-36” museum Tatiana Kursina reacted indignantly to the court authorities’ decision.

 

 

Nailya Allakhverdieva is a well-known Russian art manager, curator, artist, and laureate of the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize. She worked with the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art for over ten years and became its director in 2019. In November 2024, she was subjected to a search in connection with a case involving the gallerist and PERMM co-founder Marat Gelman, who has been added to Russia’s registry of “terrorists and extremists.” In December of last year, Nailya resigned as PERMM director, stating she had “fully implemented her plans for the museum’s development.” Later, she left Russia.

The Perm-36 team expresses its strong support for our colleague, the talented art manager Nailya Allakhverdieva. Nailya, we are with you!

Photo: Evgeny Ivanov

The Perm Regional Court has sentenced 35-year-old photographer Grigory Skvortsov to 16 years in a high-security penal colony on charges of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) related to a publicly available book about Soviet bunkers. His support group reported the verdict.

The prosecutor had requested an 18-year prison sentence.

Skvortsov denied the charges, calling them “absurd.”

The Perm resident was detained in November 2023. For a long time, his relatives did not know the nature of the accusations. In 2024, Skvortsov wrote in a letter from the detention center to the “First Department” that he was accused of treason because he allegedly gave the American journalist a book titled Soviet “Secret Bunkers”: Urban Special Fortifications of the 1930s–1960s by historian Dmitry Yurovkov. The book is based on declassified information about Soviet fortification structures.

Later, the photographer clarified that although the book was mentioned in the case, he did not give the journalist the book itself. According to Skvortsov, he found online schematics showing the locations of special facilities that had been publicly available for decades “with the connivance of the FSB and GUSP.” He noted that these schematics remain freely accessible on the internet. He also purchased from Yurovkov, the author of the work on bunkers, photographs of declassified archival documents included as additional materials to the book. These materials were promoted by Yurovkov’s friends in their blogs and in the Russian Newspaper.

In the end, Skvortsov gave the journalist the photos he bought from Yurovkov and the schematics he found online. He said he intended to share this information with the public but, after learning about the authorities’ interest, forbade the journalist from publishing the data.

“The investigator ignored my testimony that I did not use the book itself, only the additional materials. He still sent the book for examination, not the electronic document,” the photographer said. According to him, the investigator claims that Skvortsov himself created the “electronic schematic” rather than finding a ready-made plan showing the locations of special sites.

The photographer reported that after his arrest, security forces beat him, forced him to say on camera whom he had sent the data to, and themselves “suggested” the journalist’s name. Skvortsov also said they extracted passwords for his devices from him.

Grigory Skvortsov is an opponent of the war. During the investigation, he was held in the Moscow pretrial detention center SIZO-2 “Lefortovo.”

Source: OVD-Info
Additional information: BBC