‘Yes, I regret going’: Russian IT specialist returned to Russia to visit his ailing father and was charged with treason over €30 sent to his ex-girlfriend in Ukraine.

A court in Russia’s Komi Republic recently sentenced philosophy instructor Nikolai Zyuzev to seven years in a penal colony. He left Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began but returned to his home village in 2025. He was detained there and charged with treason. Zyuzev is far from the only Russian who has returned home and ended up behind bars. Memorial has counted at least 40 such cases since 2022. Meduza briefly recounts some of the most telling cases.

The purpose of this article is simple: We have no right to judge the circumstances that compel our readers abroad to travel to Russia. We want to remind them to weigh the risks and take precautions.

Nikolai Zyuzev

Zyuzev is a philosophy Ph.D. who studies the work of Pitirim Sorokin. He moved to Canada in the 2000s, taught there, and became a citizen, but returned to work in Komi in the second half of the 2010s. Friends describe him as a “classical liberal” who was also interested in preserving the Komi language and culture.

In a 2023 article for the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, Zyuzev said he was trying to create an educational platform about Russia’s Indigenous peoples. “We see an opportunity created by Putin’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine: Indigenous peoples have been disproportionately affected by the war — both on the front lines and through conscription into the Russian army. […] We hope demands for decolonization will grow louder and the Kremlin will lose control over the republics,” Zyuzev said.

He had lived in Lithuania since 2022, but traveled to his home village of Podyelsk in the summer of 2025. His friends do not know exactly why he decided to return. Perhaps he missed home and thought “no one was particularly interested in him.” After his return, Zyuzev disappeared. More than a year later, it emerged that he had been sentenced to seven years for treason over a project he had created to “liberate” Russia’s Indigenous peoples. Developed with foreign grants, the project was aimed at undermining Russia’s sovereignty, according to the country’s Federal Security Service.

Alexander Lunyov

Lunyov became known in 2012 after buying an abandoned water tower from the Tomsk authorities. He spent eight years and more than eight million rubles renovating it. He moved into the tower in the fall of 2020 but did not live there long. He moved to the Czech Republic in 2022, though he had no intention of giving up his home in Tomsk.

“Ideally, I’d make a little more money and put more into the building. We’d restore the building’s exterior and make a few other improvements. My wife and I would still come stay in the tower at least twice a year,” he told Moskvich Mag in 2025.

Lunyov was detained in Tomsk in August 2026. He had traveled from Prague to his hometown with his wife and their daughter, who was only a few months old. Perhaps he wanted to introduce her to relatives in Russia. Lunyov was accused of donating 7,000 rubles to Alexey Navalny’s FBK. He is under criminal investigation for financing extremist activity and faces up to eight years in prison.

Mikhail Loshchinin

An IT specialist, Loshchinin was born in Moscow, spent his childhood and youth in Ukraine, and had lived in Europe since the late 1990s. In the summer of 2025, he rode his motorcycle to Russia to visit his father, who had suffered a heart attack. As Loshchinin crossed the border from Latvia into Russia, border guards found many contacts in Ukraine on his phone. He still had friends and relatives there. He had not deleted anything from his phone before traveling to Russia — apparently, he did not think he had anything to hide.

He was detained and charged with treason over a 30-euro transfer he sent to his former girlfriend in Ukraine in 2022. “Do I regret going? That’s a rhetorical question under the circumstances. I lost the best job I ever had, all my money and investments, and my apartment; my abductions have taken a terrible toll on my mother’s health; and I’m rapidly losing my health, my teeth, and my eyesight. The deputy head of the investigative department says I’ll get 18 years in prison because I won’t admit guilt. Yes, I regret going,” Loshchinin wrote from pretrial detention.

Eduard Sharlot

A singer and blogger, Sharlot left for Armenia in 2022. He openly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and made videos mocking the Russian authorities and their propaganda. This drew the attention of pro-government informers in Russia, including Yekaterina Mizulina and the Sorok Sorokov movement. Nevertheless, Sharlot said in 2023 that he was returning to Russia. He was detained and sentenced to five and a half years in prison on charges of “rehabilitating Nazism” and offending religious sensibilities. He asked to be sent to the front in Ukraine but was refused.

Pavel Vladimirov

An anarchist from Voronezh, Vladimirov left Russia for Kazakhstan in 2024 at age 18. He was detained there at Russia’s request and held in custody pending extradition for a year, the maximum allowed. According to human rights advocates, his father came to pick him up when he was released and persuaded him to return to Russia, saying, “At least he’ll be nearby, even if they put him in prison.” In Russia, Vladimirov was sentenced to nine years for attempting to join “foreign armed formations.”

Oleg Varyukhin

A native of Norilsk, Varyukhin had lived in Ukraine since 1999 and ran a perfume business there. In 2026, he flew to Russia from Moldova to visit relatives. He was detained at the airport and held through four consecutive detention orders on petty hooliganism charges — a “carousel” of arrests. Afterward, Varyukhin was charged with treason. Mediazona reported that the case stemmed from taxes he had paid to Ukraine as a sole proprietor.

Warning: The paragraph below contains profanity.

Anastasia Ronzhina

Ronzhina lived in Argentina and returned to Russia in the summer of 2026 to visit her mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer. She was detained at the airport and is now in pretrial detention on charges of calling for terrorism. She faces up to seven years in prison. The details of her case are unknown, but Memorial said that, according to some accounts, the charge involves a Telegram comment saying, “Fucking hit the State Duma.”