Abducted abroad: How Russia seizes its citizens in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan — and puts them on trial back home

After the full-scale war began and Russia announced mobilization, many Russians left the country. But leaving Russia doesn’t put you beyond the reach of its security services. As Meduza has warned, some countries will extradite Russians at the request of law enforcement agencies back home. In other cases, Russians facing criminal charges at home are deported on one pretext or another. Once back in Russia, they end up in pretrial detention — as the activist Ariadna Litvinova did. And some are abducted outright, taken to Russia, and put on trial. That is what happened, for example, to Georgy Pirogov, whom the Moscow City Court sentenced in July to 23 years on charges of “treason.” Meduza recounts some of the cases in which Russians were abducted abroad.

Armenia

Dmitry Setrakov

Dmitry Setrakov was drafted in September 2022 under Russia’s so-called partial mobilization, which has never officially ended. He fled his unit in April 2023, spent six months in hiding, and then turned himself in to the military police. That November, with help from “Idite Lesom” (“Get Lost”), a group that helps Russian soldiers desert, he reached Armenia. In December, however, he was detained in an operation involving Russian military police, taken to the Russian military base in Gyumri, and sent back to Russia. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has described Setrakov’s detention as “illegal actions” on his country’s territory. What became of Setrakov after that is not publicly known.

Anatoly Shchetinin

In April 2024, Anatoly Shchetinin — a native of Kamchatka who had gone to Armenia to avoid serving in the Russian army — was detained as he left the Russian consulate in Gyumri. He, too, was brought to the Russian military base in Armenia. He first accepted help from human rights activists, then announced that he wanted to return to Russia of his own accord because his criminal case had supposedly been dropped. Shchetinin insisted that he had gone to the base in Gyumri with Russian soldier escorts of his own free will. He returned to Russia in June. In September, a military court in Rostov-on-Don handed down a verdict against a man with the same name in a desertion case, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported.

In July 2025, Russian service members reportedly tried to take Semyon Subbotin — charged in Russia with leaving his unit without permission — out of Armenian police custody. The Armenian officers refused.

Georgia

Rafail Shepelev

Rafail Shepelev, a member of the Artpodgotovka movement, disappeared in Tbilisi in October 2023. Russian law enforcement officers tricked him into leaving Tbilisi for the Tskhinvali region (South Ossetia), the legal aid group First Department reported. There he was detained and taken to Vladikavkaz, where a local court sentenced him to 15 days in jail for “petty hooliganism.” While in custody, he was charged with taking part in the activities of a terrorist organization and with justifying terrorism. He was then transferred to a pretrial detention center in Nizhny Tagil. In April 2024, Shepelev was declared legally insane and ordered into compulsory psychiatric treatment.

Kazakhstan

Kamil Kasimov

In April 2024, Kamil Kasimov — a Russian citizen charged at home with desertion — was abducted in Kazakhstan by criminal investigators from Buryatia. Kasimov had served in the Russian army and fought in Russia’s war against Ukraine. In May 2023, he decided not to return to his unit from leave and went to Kazakhstan, where he obtained a residence permit and found a job. The Russian investigators detained him at his workplace in Astana, drove him in a civilian car to a Russian military unit in Priozersk, in Kazakhstan’s Karaganda region, and then took him to Russia. Kazakh media found a ruling by the Priozersk city court stating that Kasimov had supposedly asked to be expelled from the country of his own accord, Mediazona reported. In Russia, he was taken to Omsk, where in August 2024 a military court sentenced him to six years in a maximum-security penal colony for desertion in wartime.

Kyrgyzstan

Lev Skoryakin

Lev Skoryakin, an activist with the Left Bloc, disappeared in Kyrgyzstan in October 2023. In Russia, he was accused of hooliganism over a December 2021 protest outside an FSB building — a protest he said he had nothing to do with. His associates said that on the night of October 16–17, ten men pulled up in two cars outside the Bishkek shelter where he was living. They identified themselves as local criminal investigators and drove him off to an unknown destination. Two days later, he surfaced in Moscow’s pretrial detention center No. 2, better known as Butyrka. After his trial in Moscow — where he was fined and released for time served — Skoryakin managed to reach Germany, where he was granted political asylum.

Alyona Krylova

In June 2023, police in Bishkek detained Alyona Krylova, the former press secretary of For Human Rights, a movement that Russian authorities designated a “foreign agent” and that was dissolved in 2021. In Russia, Krylova was accused of “participating in an extremist community” in the case against the group Left Resistance. She was put on the wanted list and added to the official registry of terrorists and extremists. Krylova spent some time in pretrial detention in Bishkek before she was released. In December 2023, it was a Russian court that sentenced her to two years in a penal colony. The independent Russian outlet Agentstvo reported that Krylova had been lured out of Kyrgyzstan. According to an acquaintance, her partner, who was in Russia, began urging her to come back. According to the human rights group Memorial, Krylova has since been released.

Alexei Rozhkov

In March 2022, Alexei Rozhkov set fire to a military enlistment office in the town of Berezovsky, in the Sverdlovsk region. After Russia announced mobilization in September 2022, he left for Bishkek. Kyrgyz security forces detained him in May 2023, drove him to the airport, and put him on a plane to Russia. Rozhkov has said that he was tortured: his captors pulled a bag over his head and shocked him with a stun gun. He was sent to a pretrial detention center in Yekaterinburg, and the charges against him were upgraded. In May 2025, Rozhkov was convicted of carrying out a terrorist attack, justifying terrorism, and spreading “fakes” about the Russian army, and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Uzbekistan

Georgy Pirogov

In July 2024, Georgy Pirogov, who had left Russia for Georgia after mobilization began, traveled to Uzbekistan on a work trip — and then vanished. His friends and family later learned that he was in Moscow, in the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center. On July 12, 2026, it emerged that the Moscow City Court had sentenced Pirogov to 23 years in a maximum-security penal colony on charges of “treason.” It’s unknown how he ended up in Russia, or what exactly he was accused of. His relatives are certain he was abducted and taken to Russia by force.