Russian anti-corruption campaigner detained and drafted into army

Artyom Ionov — an employee of Alexey Navalny’s Anti-corruption Foundation (FBK) — has been detained and drafted into military service, reports FBK director Ivan Zhdanov.

“In the morning they ambushed [him] at home and immediately took [him] to the distribution point [for conscripts] in the city of Zheleznodorozhny, Moscow region. They took [his] communication devices. A lawyer was not allowed access to him,” Zhdanov wrote on Telegram.

According to Zhdanov, Ionov has asthma, “there weren’t any doubts that he was unfit for [military] service.” The FBK is planning to appeal to the courts to suspend the draft commission’s activities, Zhdanov added.

Ionov worked as technical support for the YouTube program “Rossiya Budushchego” (“Russia of the Future”), which is hosted by Alexey Navalny. Zhdanov speculates that Ionov was forcibly drafted into the army in order to disrupt the broadcast.

In December 2019, FBK project manager Ruslan Shaveddinov was forcibly drafted into a Russian army military unit stationed on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. While the FBK maintained that Shaveddinov had been abducted, the military commissariat considered his recruitment legal.