Should I stay, or should I go (back)?
16 stories of Russians who returned to their homeland and ended up behind bars
This report is intended to help readers form their own opinion about a topic that is a difficult one for many Russians who have left the country: whether it is safe to return to the Russian Federation. Even for a short time, for the most important and urgent of matters. Are the security forces watching you? Have they lost interest in you, have they forgotten about you over the years? Are you at risk for posts you made on the Internet (even very old ones)? For participating in anti-war protests in Russia or abroad? For donations to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation or to Ukrainian organisations? Is there a risk you will be detained even if you are almost certain you have done nothing wrong? What could happen to you?
To help you make up your mind about this, we offer you 16 stories of men and women who decided to return and soon found themselves in custody. We analyse the grounds for their prosecution and why they attracted the attention of the security forces. We make recommendations as to who should not return to Russia, even for a short time. You will find these recommendations at the end of our review.
Please note: some links lead to sources in Russian and there is no English equivalent. In some pages (especially persons) information in English might be incomplete, for more details try switching to the Russian version and using Google translate extension.
________
According to various estimates, in the first 12 months following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, between 500,000 and 1.3 million people left Russia. Most of those who left went to countries that have no visa requirements for Russian citizens, namely Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, the UAE and Mongolia. They subsequently either remained in these countries or moved on to others, including Israel, Mexico, the United States, European countries, Australia, and Argentina.
In the following years, Russians continued to leave the Russian Federation, but a reverse process also began as some of those who had left returned. The main reasons for returning from other countries were the costs of housing, difficulties with obtaining residence permits, lack of work, and the protracted war. According to a survey by the Financial Times, more than 15% of those who left subsequently returned to Russia, either temporarily or permanently. According to information from the Moscow-based relocation company Finion, about 40-45% of those who left returned to Russia.
Undoubtedly, many of those who decided to return managed to resume their lives in Russia in a relatively normal way. However, there are also those for whom returning to their homeland, even to make a short visit to their relatives, resulted in arrest, custody and terms of imprisonment. In this report, we relate the stories of several of those who returned. Our focus is not on those who returned for reasons of political belief, individuals for whom life outside Russia was unthinkable and who wanted to continue their political activity, such as Aleksei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza. This report is about those who underestimated the risks or considered them insignificant when compared with the reasons that made them return to Russia, either temporarily or permanently.
Stories of those who returned
Ksenia Karelina, a native of Ekaterinburg, obtained US citizenship in 2021. In the US she married and acquired a second surname, Havana. On 27 January 2024, 32-year-old Karelina entered Russia to visit her parents. When she flew into Koltsovo airport in Ekaterinburg, she was asked to unlock her phone. Searching the phone, security forces found evidence of a monetary transfer of $51.8 made on 24 February 2022 to the account of the US-based Ukrainian humanitarian organisation, Razom for Ukraine. Karelina was then detained on trumped-up charges of petty hooliganism: she allegedly swore and behaved in an arrogant and provocative manner. Soon after, a criminal charge was brought against for ‘treason in the form of providing financial assistance to a foreign state in activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation’ (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [CC RF]).
Karelina was remanded in custody. At her trial the court ruled that the money Ksenia Karelina had transferred was subsequently used ‘by the Ukrainian armed forces to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons and ammunition.’ In addition, in the United States, Karelina ‘repeatedly took part in public protests in support of the Kyiv regime.’ On 5 August 2024 she was sentenced to 12 years in a general regime penal colony. While she admitted she had transferred funds to the Ukrainian organisation, she insisted it was for humanitarian purposes. On 10 April 2025, thanks to her American citizenship, Ksenia was released in a prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States.
The story of journalist Alsu Kurmasheva also ended in her release. On 20 May 2023, the 46-year-old editor of Radio Liberty‘s Tatar-Bashkir service, who was living in the Czech Republic, flew to Kazan for family reasons.
On 2 June 2023, she was detained at the airport while awaiting her return flight. Kurmasheva’s passports were seized and she was charged with the criminal offence of failing to notify the authorities of her dual citizenship (Article 330.2 CC RF). On 11 October 2023, she was convicted and fined 10,000 roubles.
On 18 October 2023, while Kurmasheva was still waiting for her passports to be returned, she was detained on a charge of failing to register herself as a foreign agent (Article 330.1, Part 3, CC RF). On 23 October, she was remanded in custody. On 2 December, it became known that an additional criminal charge had been brought against Alsu Kurmasheva for spreading ‘fake news’ about the use of the Russian armed forces (Article 207.3, Part 2, CC RF). The basis for this charge was the book No to War: 40 Stories of Russians Opposing the Invasion of Ukraine, published by Radio Liberty‘s Tatar-Bashkir service in November 2022. The book consisted of monologues by forty residents of the Volga region who had protested against the war with Ukraine. Kurmasheva was accused of having been involved in the distribution of this book. She denied all the charges, but on 19 July 2024 was sentenced to six and a half years’ imprisonment. On 1 August 2024, she was released as part of an international prisoner exchange.
Unfortunately, this is where the stories of miraculous releases end.
A former technical director of Navalny LIVE, Daniel Kholodny left Russia shortly after Moscow City Court designated the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Aleksei Navalny’s headquarters as extremist organisations and banned their activities in June 2021. According to reports, Kholodny then distanced himself from politics and focused on his own small internet business providing hosting services, which he had started as a student. In February 2024 24-year-old Kholodny travelled to Russia for a few days to settle some urgent personal matters. ‘He didn’t expect to be detained,’ a friend of Kholodny told the BBC, ‘because many former staff of the organisation had been taken in for questioning but then released. He believed that this was the worst that could happen to him. But for some reason, the investigators decided he was more important than everyone else. There is no obvious reason why.’
On 4 March 2022, Kholodny was remanded in custody on charges of ‘participation in an extremist group’ (Article 282.1, Part 2, CC RF) and ‘financing extremist activities using an official position’ (Article 282.3, Part 2, CC RF). Kholodny maintained his innocence of the charges and refused to acknowledge the Anti-Corruption Foundation had received foreign funding. In a joint trial with Aleksei Navalny, Daniel Kholodny was sentenced to eight years in a general regime penal colony. He is currently serving his sentence in a penal colony in Tver region.
24-year-old musician and blogger Eduard Sharlot openly condemned the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the spring of 2023, he left for Armenia from where he continued to criticise the Russian authorities, mocking propagandists and staging performances ridiculing ‘Z-patriots.’ Among other things, he burned his Russian passport and declared he was no longer a Russian citizen. He also nailed his military ID to a birch tree along with a photograph of Patriarch Kirill. In another video, Eduard Sharlot threw eggs at a poster for a concert by Shaman, a pro-government Russian singer. All this attracted the attention of informers from the fundamental Orthodox movement Forty Forties and Ekaterina Mizullina, who demanded that he be punished.
Nevertheless, on 13 November 2023, the musician announced he was returning to Russia to ‘fight for Russian-speaking culture’ and record a new album. Shortly before his return, Sharlot published a post on his Instagram account, captioning a screenshot of his plane tickets with the words, ‘I bought a ticket to the Russian Federation, not to country Z.’
On 22 November 2023, Sharlot was arrested upon his return. On 7 December 2024, at his trial he was convicted on charges of ‘public actions expressing clear disrespect for society committed to insult believers’ religious feelings’ (Article 148, Part 1, CC RF), ‘inciting hatred and degrading the dignity of a group of persons on the basis of their nationality with the threat of violence’ (Article 282, Part 2 [a], CC RF), ‘desecration of symbols of Russia’s military glory, committed publicly using the media or the Internet’ (Article 354.1, Part 4, CC RF) and ‘damage to an official document, committed out of personal interest’ (Article 325, Part 1, CC RF). He was sentenced to five and a half years’ imprisonment in a low security penal colony in Togliatti. However, in August 2025 a court ruled that he should be transferred to a general regime penal colony ‘for bad behaviour and negatively influencing other convicts.’
Skilled worker Evgeny Varaksin worked at the Elektrokhimpribor plant in the town of Lesnoi in Sverdlovsk region until 2022. Shortly before the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, 24-year-old Varaksin quit his job and went to Poland to work at a car assembly plant. On his page on VK, in comments to a pinned post, Varaksin briefly described his life in Poland, the flat he rented, his work at the car plant, and praised Polish machine tools and technologies, comparing them with Russian ones. Varaksin did not discuss political issues on his page. Only in early March 2022, immediately after the start of the war, did he write: ‘We left in time … Well, of course, I am against the war. Who in their right mind would be in favour of the war?’
On 24 May 2024, in comments to the same post about life in Poland, Varaksin wrote: ‘The end?’ And a few days later, in a final comment: ‘The end.’ Apparently, he was referring to Poland’s refusal to grant him political asylum, for which, so far as we know, he had applied. The grounds of his application for asylum are not known. After his work visa expired and his asylum application was denied, Evgeny was forced to return to Russia. When checking the contents of his smartphone (probably while crossing the border), law enforcement officers discovered a monetary transfer to Caritas Poland, a charitable foundation, and on that basis initiated a criminal case against him on a charge of ‘treason in the form of providing financial assistance to a foreign state, international or foreign organisation in activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation’ (Article 275 CC RF). On 22 July 2024, Varaksin was remanded in custody and on 21 April 2025 he was convicted and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in a strict regime penal colony. He is serving his sentence in a penal colony in Ekaterinburg.
Back in 2020, while still a schoolboy in Ufa, Makar Nikolaev was one of the winners of the nationwide competition ‘My Country — My Russia’ in the category ‘My Country. My History. My Victory’ (the competition was one of a number of presidentially-sponsored projects on the theme of ‘Russia — a country of opportunities’). Based on his experience researching the life of his deceased great-grandfather, Nikolaev developed a method for searching for information and creating an archive about relatives who had lived during World War II. After graduating from school, Makar left to study political science at a German university.
In August 2024, during the university holidays, 20-year-old Nikolaev flew from Germany to Ufa to visit his family. He was detained by FSB officers and remanded in custody. Media reported that Nikolaev was accused of posting comments on social media calling for the ‘overthrow of the regime in Russia,’ expressing support for Ukraine, and advocating for people to join the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC).
On 16 May 2025, Nikolaev was sentenced to six years in a general regime penal colony on a charge of ‘making public calls to engage in terrorism, public justification or propaganda of terrorism by means of the internet’ (Article 205.2, Part 2, CC RF). Nikolaev’s last known place of detention was the remand prison in Ekaterinburg.
Anna Bazhutova, a 30-year-old Muscovite, hosted entertainment streams and was interested in feminism. Her Twitch channel had about 9,000 subscribers. After the killings in Bucha, she did an emotional stream in which she read eyewitness accounts and did not hide her indignation and anger. The stream caught the attention of representatives of misogynistic movements. Anna began to receive threats and deleted her channel, after which she left with her family for Astana in Kazakhstan. However, family problems and her mother’s illness forced her to return to Russia soon after.
A couple of months after her return, in August 2023 Bazhutova was detained and remanded in custody. In detention Bazhutova, who has suffered from panic attacks and agoraphobia since her early youth, was deprived of medication and necessary medical and psychological support. After 10 months on remand, on 5 June 2024 she was convicted on a charge of ‘public dissemination of information known to be false under the guise of reliable reports about the use of the Russian armed forces, motivated by political hatred’ (Article 207.3, Part 2 [e], CC RF) and sentenced to five and a half years in a general regime penal colony. There are grounds to believe new criminal charges may be brought against her.
Oleg Tretyakov, a 52-year-old businessman, biker, parachutist and blogger, left Solikamsk for Kazakhstan after the start of mobilisation. He travelled across Kazakhstan on his motorbike, publishing on his blog about his travels and about protests against Russia’s war against Ukraine. He delivered humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian embassy in Kazakhstan on several occasions.
In October 2023, Tretyakov was forced to return to Russia because his daughter had fallen ill. On 21 February 2024, he was detained and then remanded in custody on a charge of justifying terrorism (Article 205.2, Part 2, CC RF). The security forces drew attention to a video clip he had posted while he was in Kazakhstan on the day of the attack on the Crimean Bridge in 2022, with the words ‘Mordor will be destroyed!’ On 13 January 2025, Oleg Tretyakov was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in a general regime penal colony. Tretyakov’s last known location in Russia was Remand Prison No. 5 in Ekaterinburg.
In May 2023, 28-year-old volunteer Nadezhda Rossinskaya (Nadine Geisler) from Belgorod, founder of the volunteer project Army of Beauties that helped Ukrainian refugees, left Russia after she began receiving threats. She travelled first to Turkey and then to Georgia but returned to Russia a year later. The reasons why Rossinskaya returned to Russia are not known. However, a week after her return, on 1 February 2024, FSB officers detained Rossinskaya in a rented apartment in Belgorod. The following day she was remanded in custody on a charge of ‘making public calls to carry out activities directed against the security of the state’ (Article 280.4, Part 2, CC RF). The basis for the charge was an Instagram post in which Rossinskaya allegedly called for donations to the Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian army.
Subsequently, two more charges were brought against Rossinskaya in connection with the same post: ‘providing assistance to terrorist activities’ (Article 205.1, Part 4, CC RF) and ‘treason’ (Article 275 CC RF) for making monetary transfers to the Ukrainian armed forces. In court, Rossinskaya stated that the account on which the post calling for donations to the Azov Battalion was published did not belong to her and that she had not made any monetary transfers to the Ukrainian armed forces.
On 20 June 2025, Nadezhda Rossinskaya was sentenced to 22 years in a general regime penal colony. She is being held in Remand Prison No. 3 in Belgorod.
Aleksei Malyarevsky from Rostov-on-Don, who had been living mostly in Prague for the previous five years, returned to Russia for family reasons. On 20 October 2023, Aleksei, who is 28 years old, was detained. He was charged with two offences: ‘participation in an extremist group’ (Article 282.1, Part 2, CC RF) and ‘financing extremist activities’ (Article 282.3, Part 1, CC RF).
Malyarevsky was accused of distributing leaflets in 2023 condemning the sentence handed down to Aleksei Navalny and transferring $150 to the Anti-Corruption Foundation via the Revolut bank. He had sent photographs of the leaflets, in which Malyarevsky asked whether the judge was sleeping well, to an ‘unidentified member of the Navalny Headquarters movement.’ In doing so, he ‘took part in the activities of an extremist association.’ On 4 April 2024, Malyarevsky was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in a general regime penal colony. Aleksei Malyarevsky is serving his sentence in a penal colony in Orenburg.
Sergei Irin, a former programmer at Yandex, left Russia after the start of the full-scale invasion and lived in Turkey and Sri Lanka. In April 2024, 44-year-old Irin returned to Nizhny Novgorod to visit his mother and brother, as well as to meet up with old friends and go kayaking with them. Shortly after, he was detained and jailed for five days on an administrative-law charge of petty hooliganism. On his release on 1 May, Irin was again detained, this time on a criminal charge of treason. The basis for the charge was a transfer of $500 to the Ukrainian fund Come Back Alive which Irin made using his bank card on 27 February 2022.
While in custody, Sergei Irin reported in letters that he had been tortured with a taser. He was subsequently flown to Moscow and held on remand in Lefortovo prison. On 26 August 2025, Irin was sentenced to 15 years in a strict regime penal colony, with the first three years to be served in a cell-type prison. In addition, the court fined Irin 5 million roubles. During sentencing, Irin refused to stand up in the court room and held up a poster with the words: ‘Putin is a dickhead.’
Returning to the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia may be no less dangerous than returning to Russia itself. Liudmila Kolesnikova, a 35-year-old Crimean resident who had returned to her homeland, was also charged with treason (Article 275 CC RF). A lawyer by training, Kolesnikova had served in the Ukrainian police for some time before the annexation of Crimea and then for several years had worked as an investigator for the Russian police, obtaining Russian citizenship but retaining her Ukrainian citizenship. In 2022, she left Crimea to live in Ireland, where she obtained ‘temporary protection’ status. In Ireland she changed her profession and became a cosmetologist. In June 2024, she travelled to Yalta to visit her mother, who was severely ill with cancer. Her mother died that month and shortly after the funeral Kolesnikova was detained by the FSB.
As in the case of Ksenia Karelina, Kolesnikova was initially charged with petty hooliganism (swearing in a public place) but was then charged with treason for ‘providing financial assistance to Ukraine to the amount of 25 euro.’ According to Kolesnikova, in 2022 she had bought two NFT stamps called ‘Warship’ through the Diya postal service, part of the proceeds from the sale of which went to purchase drones in Ukraine: ‘I had forgotten about it. But they [presumably FSB officers] allegedly found a transaction for €25 in my Revolut banking app and charged me under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code,’ Kolesnikova said.On 4 October 2024, she was remanded in custody. As Kolesnikova herself suggested in a letter written from detention, she was prosecuted because of denunciations by former colleagues from Crimea: ‘They didn’t like that I left for Europe and that I was showing how good life is there,’ she said. On 5 July 2025, Kolesnikova was sentenced to serve 17 years in a general regime penal colony for treason. She is currently awaiting the hearing of her appeal on remand in Crimea.
Businessman Roman Grigoryan also lived in Crimea. In 2023, he moved with his family from Sevastopol to Spain. On his personal Instagram page, Grigoryan posted photos of protests with Ukrainian flags and his prosperous life in Valencia, which brought him to the attention of the Telegram channel Sevastopol. Smersh which specialises in identifying and exposing supporters of Ukraine in Crimea. The channel reported that Grigoryan still had property in Sevastopol, which he rented out ‘for 400,000 roubles a month.’
In 2024, 37-year-old Grigoryan travelled to Crimea to sell his property and was detained by FSB officers. According to the prosecution, while in Spain Grigoryan had supported projects on the Internet that help raise funds for the purchase of unmanned marine drones, unmanned aerial vehicles and armoured vehicles for the Ukrainian armed forces, transferring money to them over a period of six months. On 7 February 2025, Grigoryan was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in a strict regime penal colony on a charge of treason (Article 275 CC RF). Grigoryan’s current whereabouts are unknown.
The threat of criminal prosecution upon return exists not only for Russian citizens, but also for Ukrainians in the occupied territories. One example is the prosecution of Iryna Navalna, a 24-year-old Ukrainian resident of Mariupol who left the city with her mother in May 2022 after it was occupied by Russian troops.
The two women travelled via Russia and European countries to Berdychiv in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region where they settled. When leaving Mariupol, they were forced to undergo a filtration procedure, during which FSB officers mocked Iryna for her surname and held a gun to her head. At the end of August 2022, Navalna returned to Mariupol to visit her grandmother and collect her personal belongings, intending to return to Berdychiv at the end of September. However, a few days before her departure, on 27 September 2022, she was detained on trumped up charges of ‘preparing a terrorist attack’ — blowing up a building where the referendum was to be held. On 7 October 2024, Navalna was convicted on charges of ‘illegal acquisition, storage, transportation of explosives and explosive devices by a group of persons by prior agreement using the Internet’ (Article 222.1, Part 3 [a, b], CC RF) and ‘attempted terrorist act by a group of persons by prior agreement’ (Article 30, Part 3, CC RF in conjunction with Article 205, Part 2 [a], CC RF). She was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.
Conclusions and Trends
From the stories cited above, we conclude that there is a broad range of offences with which people returning to Russia or to the occupied territories can be charged. At the same time, there is a quite narrow range of methods used by the security forces to prove a crime: primarily examining mobile devices at the border and searching for information about monetary transfers to ‘extremist’ or ‘terrorist’ organisations (among which the Russian authorities include the Anti-Corruption Foundation, units of the Ukrainian armed forces and Ukrainian charitable organisations).
Grounds for initiating criminal cases can include both acts committed outside the Russian Federation (as in the cases of Karelina, Tretyakov and others) and acts committed before the defendants left Russia (for example, the cases of Rossinskaya, Irin and Bazhutova). Often, once outside the Russian Federation and with no plans to return, individuals felt freer and more relaxed and did not fear to speak out against the war, publish photos from protests in which they took part, or talk about their participation in protests in Russia. However, there is reason to believe that Russian security forces monitor such activity. It was precisely blog posts that led to the arrest and subsequent conviction of Oleg Tretyakov, Roman Grigoryan, Makar Nikolaev and Nadezhda Rossinskaya.
Attention paid by the security services to blogs of Russians who left the country is clearly evidenced by the testimony in court of a secret witness in the case of blogger Oleg Tretyakov. This witness, using the pseudonym ‘Korolev,’ said that on 5 December 2022 he took part in an ‘operational experiment,’ ‘in which he established contact with the defendant through an account on the VKontakte social network by means of personal correspondence on the Internet. During the operational experiment, it was confirmed that the account was administered by Tretyakov, who informed him at the time of the correspondence that he was living in the Republic of Kazakhstan, where he had travelled from Russia by train via the city of Omsk. Tretyakov also told him that he posted on the social network VKontakte and on YouTube because of his personal dislike of Russian law enforcement officials and those citizens who support the President of the Russian Federation and the special military operation. In addition, Tretyakov mentioned that he had relatives in the Vinnytsia region of Ukraine and that he was collecting humanitarian aid for Ukraine in Kazakhstan, which he was delivering to Ukrainian citizens through the Ukrainian embassy.’
Oleg Tretyakov left Russia in the autumn of 2022 and, judging by the outspoken and frank nature of his online posts, he did not intend to return to Russia any time soon. He could not have imagined that, a year later, his daughter’s illness would force him to do so. On the other hand, the Russian security forces were probably counting on his return: Korolev’s testimony shows that operational measures were already being taken against Tretyakov in early 2022, and an operative (apparently posing as a reader) entered into dialogue with him on a messaging app in order to document the authorship of the posts that later were to form the basis of the charges. From this episode we conclude that the departure of anti-war Russian citizens from the country does not prevent the security services from monitoring their social networks and blogs and even conducting operational activities against them.
In the case of the prosecution of Nadezhda Rossinskaya, it can be assumed that the reason for her lengthy prison sentence may have been personal resentment on the part of the security forces. After leaving Russia, Rossinskaya allegedly wrote a post about how she had deceived them for a long time with impunity, while providing assistance to Ukraine.
Another impetus for the criminal prosecution of Russians who have returned may be provided by informers. Liudmila Kolesnikova spoke of a denunciation written out of envy of the opportunity to live abroad. It cannot be ruled out that a denunciation for similar reasons may have played a role in the case of Evgeny Varaksin. In the case of Roman Grigoryan, it can be assumed that publication of information about his real estate in Russia, on an internet channel specialising in denunciations, forced him temporarily to return to Crimea to sell this property. While it is not certain that those responsible for the denunciations acted in collusion with the security forces, this possibility cannot be ruled out.
It is difficult to provide a complete list of reasons that compel Russians who left the country to return, since the reasons are not known in all cases. Ksenia Karelina, Sergei Irin and Makar Nikolaev travelled to Russia to visit relatives; Alsu Kurmasheva, Aleksei Malyarevsky, Liudmila Kolesnikova, Anna Bazhutova and Oleg Tretyakov went for family reasons; Daniel Kholodny returned on account of urgent business; Eduard Sharlot went to continue his creative work; Evgeny Varaksin returned because he was no longer able to stay in Europe; and Roman Grigoryan went to sell his property.
It is even more difficult to draw conclusions about how seriously those who returned and were subsequently prosecuted had assessed the risks they were taking in making their fateful decision. However, there is reason to believe that they underestimated them. This seems clear, for example, in the case of Eduard Sharlot, who stated that he was returning to the ‘Russian Federation, not to country Z,’ but whose expectations were disappointed. According to his acquaintances, Daniel Kholodny did not expect to be arrested (however, it should be noted that his return was one of the earliest, before the start of the full-scale invasion and at a time when the true scale of repressive measures was not yet clear). It can be assumed that Sergei Irin, who had difficulty finding work abroad, also underestimated the threat. His relatives told Novaya gazeta that he did not perceive any danger for himself and at the same time wanted to visit his relatives. ‘He believed Russia is his homeland and he had no reason not to return. He thought he could always leave if any problems arose.’ It should be added that Irin had already come to the attention of the security forces: in 2011 or 2012 he had been detained for participating in a protest in Moscow, and on 5 March 2022 he took part in protests against the war, was detained again and fined.
Ksenia Karelina obviously considered her money transfer insignificant, and Evgeny Varaksin could not have imagined that a contribution to a charitable foundation could be regarded by the Russian security forces as assisting the Ukrainian military. Roman Grigoryan probably underestimated the interest of law enforcement agencies in his person, and Liudmila Kolesnikova said she had completely forgotten about the purchase of the stamps, for which she was charged two years after buying them. In the case of the illness of loved ones, it would not be right for us to weigh the reasons for the decision to return, but we see that even in such cases one should not count on the humanity of the Russian security forces.
In several cases, the reasons for returning included difficulties in making a new home, problems in finding work abroad, and the inability to obtain right of residence in Europe. We must also mention cases of those who were returned to Russia involuntarily, having failed to obtain a residence permit or political asylum. Among them is 34-year-old Leonid Melekhin, a supporter of Aleksei Navalny from Perm. Melekhin left Russia for Mexico and from there crossed the border into the United States. On the day he crossed the border, he sent a message to an acquaintance to post on a channel with a photo of an anti-Putin poster hanging from a bridge, which became the basis for a criminal case against him. Even though Melekhin was outside Russia and there was no reason to believe he would return to that country, he was placed on a wanted list on charges of justifying terrorism no later than the beginning of June 2024. On 10 October of the same year, he was included in Rosfinmonitoring’s list of terrorists and extremists.
Melekhin spent at least nine months in a US immigration detention centre and then, despite the obvious risks to his safety if he returned, was denied asylum in the US and was deported to Russia. (It is difficult to judge to what extent his decision to return was voluntary and why he decided not to appeal the denial of asylum. His court-appointed lawyer claimed that the decision to return was made consciously and voluntarily, while Melekhin’s acquaintances say he had given up hope and stopped trying to resist.) On his return to Russia, Melekhin was detained, charged with making public calls to engage in terrorism (Article 205.2, Part 2, CC RF) and remanded in custody on 25 July 2025. He faces up to seven years’ imprisonment if convicted.
In several cases, the sentences were less severe than those described above. Vologda lawyer and activist Evgeny Molotov left Russia in 2022 but returned to the country at the end of the following year because his father was seriously illness. In January 2024, the 43-year-old lawyer was detained in connection with the transfer of 1,000 roubles to the Anti-Corruption Foundation. He spent three months on remand, after which he was placed under house arrest pending trial. In July 2024, Molotov was sentenced to a fine of 400,000 roubles.
Maksim Rachkov, a 33-year-old Rostov resident, left Russia with his family after the start of the war against Ukraine, but later decided to return. He was prosecuted for a post on his VK page from March 2022 when he was in Turkey. On 21 July 2022, Rachkov’s home and those of his relatives were searched and he was remanded in custody for two months on a charge of disseminating ‘fake news’ about the Russian armed forces (Article 207.3, Part 1, CC RF). He was then convicted and sentenced to 18 months in a low security penal colony. On 26 April 2023, Rachkov was released having served his sentence in full.
The article of the Criminal Code used by the security forces for a prosecution and the severity of the sentence may both be determined not only by the actions (or alleged actions) of the defendant, but also by the specifics of the law enforcement agencies in particular regions (for example the need for the agencies to meet their targets for certain categories of cases). You can read about the varying approaches to sentencing in different regions in our report on prosecutions for donating to the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
In prosecutions of Russians who returned from abroad, whose cases are considered in this report (and we have tried to cover most of the known cases of this kind), we can see that in seven cases criminal charges were initiated for treason (Article 275 CC RF), in three cases for ‘financing extremist activities’ (Article 282.3 CC RF), in two cases for participation in an extremist group (Article 282.3 CC RF) and for spreading ‘fake news’ about the army (Article 207.3 CC RF), and in one case each for public actions offending the feelings of believers (Article 148 CC RF), for desecration of symbols of military glory (Article 354.1 CC RF), for damage to an official document (Article 325 CC RF), for making public calls for terrorism or its justification on the Internet (Article 205.2 CC RF), for aiding and abetting terrorist activities (Article 205.1 CC RF), for making public calls to engage in activities directed against the security of the state (Article 280.4, Part 2, CC RF), for failure to report dual citizenship (Article 330.2 CC RF) and for failure to report oneself as a foreign agent (Article 330.1 CC RF).
In eight cases, defendants were charged with making ‘impermissible’ donations, in one case with making calls to make donations, and in eight cases with posts or videos on the Internet. In at least six cases, ‘compromising information’ about donations was found on the mobile phones of ‘returnees,’ and in at least eight cases such ‘information’ was found by monitoring social media.
Charges of treason were most often brought against returnees for ‘providing financial assistance to the enemy,’ which carries a penalty of life imprisonment. Nadezhda Rossinskaya, who received the longest sentence of 22 years, was convicted on three charges, including treason. On average, the punishment imposed on those convicted of this offence was more than 10 years’ imprisonment. Overall, the average term of imprisonment imposed on Russians who returned to the Russian Federation mentioned in this report — including for minor offences or for acts that do not constitute a crime at all, as well as in fabricated cases — was slightly under nine years.
This report shows it is mistaken to consider that criminal prosecution, in the event of returning to Russia or the occupied territories, threatens only civil society activists, politicians, journalists and popular bloggers known for their opposition views. Of course, belonging to these groups creates additional risks, but those prosecuted in at least six cases we have reviewed — Russian citizens Evgeny Varaksin, Makar Nikolaev, Liudmila Kolesnikova, Roman Grigoryan, Ksenia Karelina and Ukrainian citizen Irina Navalna – were not among them, while Sergei Irin had believed that jail terms for administrative-law offences were not a cause for concern.
As we have already said, the FSB and TsPE (Anti-Extremism Police) continue to monitor individuals who have come to their attention, even if these people have left the Russian Federation and given assurances that they will not return in the near future. In addition, individuals with dual citizenship, especially if they are also citizens of Western countries, represent a valuable resource for the repressive authorities in the event of prisoner exchanges with these states. This factor may have played a key role in the prosecutions of Alsu Kurmasheva, Ksenia Karelina, and Liudmila Kolesnikova. However, the very fact that a Russian citizen has been abroad and subsequently returns is enough to attract the interest of the security forces. At the same time, the ‘friendliness’ or ‘unfriendliness’ of that host country towards the Russian Federation is of little importance. The subjects of our report returned from very different countries: from the United States, Spain, Poland, Armenia, Canada, Germany, Georgia, Lithuania, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, in two cases from the Czech Republic, and in two others from Kazakhstan. It is also irrelevant whether the individual who left Russia was a resident of the capital city or of a small town. The security forces of all Russian regions and of occupied Ukraine have been tasked with ‘detecting politically motivated crimes’ of an ‘extremist’ or ‘terrorist’ nature.
Russia remains a dangerous country in terms of the likelihood of politically motivated criminal prosecution. This does not mean all returnees will fall victim to such prosecution, but the risk increases each year. The reason for this is that the security forces are obliged, if not to increase their activity, then at least to maintain it at the level of the previous year, while most of the activists known to them, and those with opposition or anti-war views, have either already been prosecuted and convicted or have left the country. Consequently, law enforcement agencies will be forced to ‘widen the scope’ of their interest to all those who have spent any time abroad.
We recommend that Russian citizens currently outside Russia who hold anti-war or opposition views refrain from returning, and in case of urgent need, carefully assess and weigh the risks, as well as closely following the recommendations of authoritative human rights organisations such as Technologies for Social Good or First Department.
We also recommend not travelling to Belarus, as there have been cases of civil society activists being extradited from there to Russia.
In addition, we recommend that the competent migration and other state authorities of the countries to which Russians apply for residence permits or political asylum take into account the examples and conclusions of our report when making decisions. Individuals with anti-war views who return to the Russian Federation or Russian-occupied territories may be imprisoned for long periods of time, and not only for reason of consciously made public statements, but also for actions that may seem completely harmless and of little significance.
Therefore, we recommend that you do not return to Russia or to the occupied territories, even for a short time or for the most urgent matters, if:
— You made donations in the Russian Federation or abroad to any Ukrainian organisations or initiatives, even for purely humanitarian purposes, as well as to organisations helping Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees;
— You made donations in Russia or abroad to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, or to other organisations designated in Russia as extremist, terrorist or undesirable;
— You previously interacted with such organisations, even before they were declared extremist, terrorist or undesirable in Russia;
— You participated in opposition or anti-war protests in the Russian Federation, were detained or prosecuted under administrative law, were summoned for questioning by the police, or were visited by a local police officer who warned you about the inadmissibility of participating in unauthorised protests;
— You wrote anti-war or outspoken oppositional posts or comments on any social media, including before February 2022 or in the first days after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (even if you later deleted them, as you believe);
— You posted, after leaving Russia, photos and videos of your participation in protests in Russia or photos of Ukrainian symbols;
— You did not check yourself against Russia’s ‘wanted persons’ database, or obtain a certificate that you have no criminal record through the Gosuslugi service, to ensure that no criminal charges have been brought against you.
As follows from our report, if any of the above applies to you, you are likely to face criminal prosecution, detention and a long prison sentence if you travel to the Russian Federation.