‘Put them in their place’ Blogger known as ‘Russia’s Andrew Tate’ is arrested — not for his violent statements about women, but for ‘insulting’ WWII veterans
Arsen Markaryan, a Russian blogger who has drawn comparisons to British-American influencer Andrew Tate for his violently misogynistic remarks and boasts about sex with minors, was arrested this weekend — but not for his treatment of women. Instead, authorities have charged him with “insulting the memory of defenders of the Fatherland” for statements he made about a Soviet soldier in World War II. He was reportedly taken into custody while trying to escape the country via Belarus. Meduza explains who Markaryan is and why his arrest has stirred complicated feelings among anti-war Russians.
On August 23, openly misogynistic Russian blogger Arsen Markaryan was arrested in the Moscow region on charges of “insulting the memory of defenders of the Fatherland.” According to the law enforcement-linked Telegram channel 112, Markaryan was hiding in the trunk of a car stopped along a highway near the town of Kubinka. He was allegedly planning to flee Russia via Belarus.
The charges against Markaryan were filed in connection with a video he posted “no later than February 25, 2025,” the Investigative Committee reported. According to the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, the video was about the heroism of Alexander Matrosov — a 19-year-old Soviet soldier who, according to the authorities’ official story, threw himself onto a German machine gun in 1943 so that his comrades could storm a Nazi stronghold in the Pskov region. Matrosov was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union and became one of the main symbols of self-sacrifice in Soviet wartime propaganda.
In the video, Markaryan called Matrosov “a dumbass” and questioned the value of his sacrifice:
A real man is someone who busts his ass for his wife and kids. A real man is someone who dies at war for the state. Well, I’ll tell you this much: a real man is someone who thinks about himself. […] Who’s this Matrosov guy who covered a German machine gun with his body? Hero of the Soviet Union. To me, he’s a dumbass. Because he died for God knows what, for God knows who. And it’s not even clear if dying was necessary.
The Investigative Committee said Markaryan will also be investigated for possible involvement in “other crimes against public safety and state authority.” Back in January 2025, Moscow prosecutors accused him of promoting terrorism. The Telegram channel Ostorozhno, Moskva reported that prosecutors were looking into a five-hour interview in which Markaryan spoke about donations to the Ukrainian military and drones painted with the Ukrainian flag.
An anti-war misogynist influencer
Arsen Markaryan, now 30 years old, started blogging in 2014. At first, he posted videos about “healthy living,” then expanded to other topics like self-improvement and philosophy. His core audience is men, whom he teaches how to become “high-value,” “live an extraordinary life,” and build relationships “on their own terms.”
Markaryan has over 400,000 followers on Instagram, more than 200,000 on YouTube, and 180,000 on Telegram. He also runs a private Telegram channel called Arsen Markaryan’s Base, where the price of a subscription recently doubled from 1,500 rubles ($18.60) to 3,000 rubles ($37) a month, according to Holod. That channel alone has tens of thousands of subscribers. Markaryan also sells courses, consultations, and dietary supplements. He’s claimed to have upwards of a million U.S. dollars.
His notoriety exploded in 2024, when short clips of his misogynistic remarks began going viral on social media. He claimed women are “dumber” than men, urging men to “train” them and “put them in their place.” He also said that “a proper man is one with five wives,” admitted to having sex with teenagers, and claimed that “rape is a useful experience” (a line that went viral online and that he later dismissed as a joke).
Sign up for Meduza’s daily newsletter
A digest of Russia’s investigative reports and news analysis. If it matters, we summarize it.
Markaryan’s open misogyny has earned him comparisons to other notorious figures, including Vladislav Pozdnyakov (founder of the now-banned far-right hate group Male State), Alexey Podnebesny (a self-proclaimed anti-feminist who authored the “theory of vaginocapitalism and sex communism,” later arrested for statutory rape), and online influencer Andrew Tate (accused of rape and human trafficking in Romania).
Born in Samara in southwestern Russia, Markaryan has lived outside of Russia in recent years. He has criticized the invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. Pro-war Telegram channels circulated compilations of his videos in which he called Russia “poor,” questioned its ability to defeat Ukraine, said he “would like” to see Moscow bombed, and claimed “Russians are more like animals than other people.” He also mocked the son of a Kursk submarine sailor, who was killed fighting in Ukraine. The fact that his followers call him “commander-in-chief,” while he calls them “officers,” has also outraged pro-war bloggers.
The escape attempt
On August 22, Markaryan unexpectedly posted an Instagram video from Red Square, announcing an event for his paying subscribers in Moscow. Pro-war channels picked it up the same day, furious that a blogger who “insulted soldiers, their families, and law enforcement, and cheered on the Ukrainian army” had flown to Russia “to make money.”
Censorship activist Ekaterina Mizulina, who promised last year to file a formal complaint over Markaryan’s “rape is a useful experience” remark, announced after his arrival that she would forward “all materials” to law enforcement. The next day, news broke of his arrest.
“It’s strange that the case is only about rehabilitating Nazism. What about discrediting the armed forces? Inciting ethnic hatred? Is it okay for him to call Russians ‘animals’ and ‘underdeveloped’ at the very least? […] And what about urging his audience to rape women? How is that different from the calls for violent crime made by that unhinged ‘life coach’ [Alex] Lesley, who also has a criminal case against him?” Mizulina wrote after his arrest.
Alex Lesley, the blogger she mentioned, later claimed it was he who tried to transport Markaryan out through Belarus.
When Mizulina started going after him, we took it as a signal that he should get out. […] So I took him in my car. I have this boat I use for kitesurfing — we used it to cover Arsen in the trunk, and I was driving him away. FSB officers stopped us. If it had been regular cops, nobody would have tracked us. They told me they didn’t care about me at all. But for some reason, they [arrested] Markaryan.
After the arrest, a statement appeared on Markaryan’s social media saying he was innocent — and that “extremists and enemies of the motherland” were trying to “tarnish his name out of envy.” His accounts also posted several old videos (evidently to “prove” his loyalty) where he praised the courage of Soviet people during World War II, expressed a desire to make Russian an international language, and called Russians the people with “the deepest understanding of friendship in the world.”
“My contribution to Russian society is that I’ve never planted a single destructive idea in men’s heads. I’ve only instilled personal responsibility and channeled all aggression in a positive direction,” he said in the last video shared on his accounts.
On the evening of August 25, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court sentenced him to 17 days of pre-trail detention, according to the court’s press service. He faces up to five years in prison.
While many social media users cheered Markaryan’s arrest, it drew criticism from some seemingly unlikely figures. Feminist activist Daria Serenko called on people not to celebrate the blogger’s prosecution, writing:
As you know, I’m practically the last person on the Russian Internet who would wish Arsen Markaryan anything good in this life. But right now, he’s being detained on political charges, which Russia uses for the sake of repressing citizens. His case — most likely, and obviously — is politically motivated. I doubt he would speak out in my support, but I’ll speak out in his. Not even in support of Arsen Markaryan himself, but in support of Russia one day having just courts. […] It’s tempting to gloat, but that would mean gloating at everyone who’s in prison on these charges or who will be in the future.
We usually do the talking at fundraisers. This time, we’ll let our readers speak for us. “Dear stranger, if you can support Meduza on our behalf, please do. And we’ll be here supporting our fellow citizens who are being persecuted and stripped of their freedom by Russian authorities. Thank you to everyone who helps journalists tell the truth, talk about things that matter to society, and give us the information we need to grow and persevere.” — Yulia