A Russian blogger documented horrific conditions at a local morgue — and police promptly beat him up and threw him in jail
A blogger in Siberia faces criminal charges after posting a video documenting unsanitary conditions at a morgue, according to a lawyer familiar with the case. Artem Pavlechko, who lives in the city of Tulun in the Irkutsk region, has been charged with violating privacy laws, according to his lawyer, Anna Anufrieva. State investigators confirmed that a 34-year-old man is suspected of illegally sharing private details about a doctor, including his home address, in a video posted in January to VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network.
The footage that led to the charges shows graphic conditions inside the morgue. Anufrieva said that on January 14, Pavlechko published a 16-minute video recorded inside Tulun’s forensic medical department with the caption: “Horrible unsanitary conditions at Tulun morgue, or making money off people’s grief.”
Dressed in camouflage, Pavlechko confronts morgue staff, including a medical worker who discards a cigarette butt in a sink beside an autopsy table. “People are complaining that things here aren’t done in a Christian way,” he says in the video. “It’s a mess, it’s filthy, it’s a dump. You’re spraying bodies down with a hose; dead bodies are just piled on top of each other. People bury these folks later, kiss them goodbye. Is everybody in Tulun going to end up like this someday? Right? Tossed here with your cigarette butts?”
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The video shows bodies on dirty cots, with clothing and belongings scattered or piled on the floor beside them, and filthy instruments lying near the autopsy tables.
Pavlechko then visits a church, a funeral services company, and the residence of Sergey Dolenchuk, whom he identifies as the morgue’s director. Throughout the video, Pavlechko is accompanied by an unnamed man, possibly the former morgue worker who had also lobbied human rights activists to “bring national attention to this story.”
The footage ends with police being called to the morgue after the blogger’s visit. He and his companion then go to the prosecutor’s office to file a complaint. Shortly after the video was published, the prosecutor’s office reported that it had initiated an inspection of the Tulun morgue facilities following a complaint from a local resident, whose name was not disclosed. No results of the inspection have been announced.
The morgue director countered by filing a police complaint against the blogger, alleging invasion of privacy, according to Baza, a Telegram channel with law enforcement ties. The director accused Pavlechko of “barging onto private property,” Baza said.
Police arrested the blogger on the morning of February 11. Human rights activist Anna Tazheeva told the media outlet Ostorozhno Media, run by socialite Ksenia Sobchak, that special forces officers raided Pavlechko’s home and assaulted him. Lawyer Anna Anufrieva published a photo showing Pavlechko being escorted by several officers. The image shows a large bruise on his face.
Law enforcement held Pavlechko for two days and released him only on the evening of February 13, Sobchak reported. After his release, Pavlechko confirmed that officers beat him while he was in custody and forced him to record an apology to the morgue staff and the person who filed the complaint against him — likely the morgue’s director.
Irkutsk police later released footage of the arrest. The video does not name Pavlechko, identifying him merely as a 34-year-old “offender who calls himself a blogger” and partially blurring his face. However, Pavlechko remains identifiable in the video, largely due to his clothing. The footage shows special forces officers smashing down his apartment door with a sledgehammer before forcing him to apologize to the morgue workers.
Law enforcement officials studied Pavlechko’s posts and filed a report against him for publicly displaying extremist symbols, according to the agency’s statement. It did not specify the exact nature of the violation. Baza reported that anti-extremism authorities spotted a keychain with a “thieves’ star” image in one of the blogger’s videos and may have deemed it a symbol of the banned “AUE movement” — a purported subculture among Russian teenagers that glorifies prison and criminality. The Interior Ministry said a court had already reviewed the case and ordered Pavlechko to serve the short jail sentence he had just completed.
Baza reported that Pavlechko was released on his own recognizance. The blogger’s family and friends told the Telegram channel he suffered bruises and scrapes on his body. Baza published a video of Pavlechko showing visible signs of beatings on his body.
Artem Pavlechko, a Tulun-based blogger who documents local and regional issues on social media, became known for videos in which he argues with traffic police officers, according to the Siberian news outlet People of Baikal. Pavlechko ran for mayor of Tulun in 2024 and won 17 percent of the vote.
Pavlechko has styled himself as the “blogger of all Russia” and “Russia’s future president.” His YouTube channel, Siberian Freshness, promises to “sow goodness, light, and eternity,” according to its description. Pavlechko’s public page of the same name was later rebranded as “Your Mentor at Alfa,” where he actively promoted Alfa Bank’s services and published videos until January 2025.
Pavlechko’s Instagram reveals a catalog of videos: musings on his personal life, feuds with other bloggers, and criticism of local government officials. He began posting frequently about local issues in Tulun roughly a year before the city’s mayoral race.
His social media accounts also feature darker content, including a xenophobic video urging followers to form a “Bastrykinite militia” — a reference to Federal Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin — to target Tajik migrant workers in Russia. He also posted videos about fundraising for Russian forces in Ukraine. At the same time, however, his Facebook avatar depicts his Russian passport engulfed in flames.