Remembering Alexey Okopny, the notorious ‘anti-extremism’ cop who became the face of Putin’s police state
Police officers in Putin’s Russia often hide their faces, but Alexey Okopny never did. Over his decades-long career in law enforcement, Okopny became an unlikely public figure in Moscow: an “anti-extremism” officer known for haunting anti-government rallies and monitoring opposition politicians and ordinary protesters alike. Also known for his brutal interrogations, Okopny faced accusations of beating and torturing detainees, and he was widely believed to have had a hand in the 2007 killing of 22-year-old National Bolshevik activist Yury Chervochkin. Nevertheless, he rose to become the deputy head of Moscow’s Anti-Extremism Center (commonly known as Center E). Following Okopny’s death in early December, Meduza spoke to Mediazona editor Dmitry Treshchanin to learn more about the rise of Center E and Okopny’s career trajectory. The following excerpts from that interview have been edited and abridged for clarity.
On Okopny’s early career
Alexey Okopny was from Nalchik [the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria], and that’s where he started his career. There were some rather grim stories about his workplace, Nalchik’s Organized Crime Unit (UBOP). Detainees were beaten and tortured; some people were killed in their cells. [Okopny’s] immediate superior, Anatoly Kyarov, beat and tortured activists. Whether Okopny himself took part is unknown.
The context of the Second Chechen War is important here, because that’s when the police culture of that era was shaped. Many practices, including torture, were brought to central Russia from the North Caucasus. It’s generally understood that police officers from across Russia went on assignments to Chechnya during the wars and picked up practices from notorious detention sites. [Activists recall] that Okopny visibly tensed up whenever Chernokozovo — one of the most infamous torture centers of the Second Chechen War — was mentioned in his presence. Whether he had a direct connection to it remains unclear.
Okopny was in his early 20s when he moved to Moscow, and he became a local “celebrity” among political activists almost immediately. (At that time, there were a few thousand activists in all of Russia, and a few hundred in Moscow.) Typically, an officer’s job is to be invisible: a faceless, forgettable figure. Okopny turned that on its head. Even among officers who were already harsh and lawless, he seemed to especially revel in his power, so his name and face quickly became widely recognized.
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On how Okopny tracked activists
Filming people at protests goes back to the Soviet era, before facial recognition technology. Opposition circles were small, so, just like with tracking criminals, [the authorities] had to know all their “targets” personally, catalog them, and map their social connections. If they saw someone as an opponent, they had to know where they lived, who influenced them, and who they influenced — so that when trouble started, they knew who was most dangerous. Detaining people and recording their passport details wasn’t just about imposing fines, it was about understanding the enemy. Security officers think, “We can’t arrest you yet, but we’ll know you better than you know yourself.”
[Okopny] was absolutely [assigned to track specific individuals at protests]. He also catalogued newcomers, noted the most vocal or charismatic participants, and flagged them for potential detention. Leaders like [Alexey] Navalny and [Ilya] Yashin were mainly monitored by the FSB, but Center E needed to track them too because officers from other regions needed to be instructed on who to detain.
Okopny probably started by monitoring individual activists outside protests as well. There are so many testimonies from people whom he tracked that it’s hard to know who was his “personal client.” He didn’t just focus on “top” figures — he seemed to enjoy breaking the toughest activists. If someone was genuinely formidable, that’s when Okopny would intervene.
On the brutal death of National Bolshevik activist Yury Chervochkin
Okopny was sent to keep an eye on National Bolshevik activist Yury Chervochkin in [the Moscow suburb of] Serpukhov. He and his colleagues tailed him for weeks, but they were so bad at it that the [22-year-old] figured them out and started shaking them off. Sure, sometimes surveillance is meant to be obvious, to apply pressure, but usually the person being watched isn’t supposed to notice it.
[On November 22, 2007], a group of people beat Chervochkin to death with baseball bats. He had been in contact with other National Bolsheviks, telling them that he was being followed, and that Okopny was watching him directly. So right after the murder, a theory started circulating in opposition circles that Okopny was involved. But there was no real investigation, and the criminal case went nowhere. No one was even formally charged as an accomplice.
As far as we understand today, Okopny wasn’t involved in the murder. It was probably done by criminals who owed the UBOP and were working off their debt. In other words, the agency had enough pull to call in a favor.
Like many operatives, Okopny fought against what was called the “orange threat” — any “non-systemic” opposition. This included everything from street movements to the [far-right] National Bolshevik Party and small activist groups. This wasn’t one person’s job, the whole UBOP had shifted its focus from criminals to the opposition. But Okopny, as the most zealous, focused on the most prominent activists.
Chervochkin was exactly that kind of person at the time: a fairly prominent figure in the Moscow region. After his murder, Okopny’s name spread far beyond activist circles, but he didn’t face any consequences — no investigation, no dismissal. Moreover, the murder was openly condoned by Kremlin political strategists. In a post on Russian Journal, [political strategist] Gleb Pavlovsky wrote: “This is politics, kids. People can be killed here.” This was essentially the Kremlin’s political bloc expressing its approval and [saying] these people could be killed.
On the shift from targeting organized crime to targeting ‘political threats’
In the mid-2000s, after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, UBOP branches began refocusing on politics. Around 2004–2005, they dealt less with mafia rivalries and more with street politics. There was a strong basis for this: skinhead gangs were rampant and violently attacking people. Local police couldn’t handle them, so it became the UBOP’s job. However, I think the main reason was [the Kremlin’s] fear of the “orange threat.” Previously, the FSB had handled this, but they were smaller and more intellectual. Now, they needed muscle, and they sent the toughest and most lawless police officers to deal with “political threats.”
When Dmitry Medvedev — who was considered a liberal — came to power in [2008], he formalized this shift. He abolished the UBOP branches and established Center E. However, this was essentially rebranding: by then, the UBOP branches rarely dealt with criminals. Center E transformed into a political police force. In the 2000s, [propagandist] Maxim Kononenko coined the phrase “the bloody regime’s watchdog,” which was taken as a joke. But by then, they were indeed the watchdogs of the regime, which later became truly bloody.
On how Center E’s methods evolved
Its method didn’t evolve much. In the 2000s, the officers fighting the opposition outnumbered the opposition itself. Each target received roughly individual attention: some were broken, some recruited, some had information gathered on them. The UBOP branches weren’t small — they had hundreds of people per region. Meanwhile, there were maybe ten political activists or fewer. It was a cat-and-mouse game. Journalists were targeted less frequently, but then they began surveilling them. At first, the harshest measures weren’t applied to liberal activists — they were aimed at more radical ones.
This escalated beginning in 2011–2012. A lot more people got involved in politics, and they were easier to intimidate. They didn’t have an activist background and hadn’t been taught “life hacks” for how to behave when being detained. A person would show up at a protest and, just like that, end up in Okopny’s office. This is terrifying in itself, and you wouldn’t need to be particularly brutal to make them cave. In this sense, the cops had more work, but their job got easier.
On Okopny’s work in recent years
It’s hard to say how many hundreds of people passed through Okopny’s interrogations. The stories vary, [but some] included threats of sexual violence. One of the most striking was when he threatened to shoot an activist’s leg during questioning. He had a very particular style of working. Naturally, he rose through the ranks.
From what we understand, he became deputy head of Moscow’s Center E during the war. He was generally office-bound, not in the field. We have no reports of recent interrogations. He became a colonel, moved to administrative work: the deputy head of Center E isn’t supposed to be out freezing at rallies. He was a regional officer who made a brilliant career for himself, reaching a highly influential position in Moscow. If he hadn’t died, he might have become a general, heading the whole agency.
