Popular Russian YouTuber arrested on treason charges

Well-known St. Petersburg video blogger Andrey Pyzh (a.k.a. “Andrey MSH”) has been jailed in Moscow on charges of disseminating state secrets, reports Open Media. 

The criminal case against Pyzh was opened on August 5 and he was detained the next day. Given the charges against him — “the illegal receipt of information containing state secrets, associated with their dissemination or movement abroad” — he could face between three and eight years in prison.

Pyzh runs a popular YouTube channel called “urbanturizm,” where he uploads videos of his visits to various industrial facilities in Russia, including ones that are closed. His channel has 783,000 subscribers.

According to Open Media, Pyzh uploaded a video of a visit to the “Dnepr–M” radar station in the Murman Region, which contains missile attack warning systems. Pyzh’s lawyer (by appointment) claims that the criminal case is not related to his videos.

A member of Moscow’s [Public Monitoring Commission], Marina Litvinovich visited the blogger at the Lefortovo pretrial detention center on Tuesday. “It turned out that he had no clothes except the ones he was arrested in, he doesn’t have a penny in his personal [bank] account, he hasn’t received a single parcel, nor package, nor letter. He has a lawyer by appointment. Among his relatives he has only his mother and girlfriend, but he hasn’t been able to contact them,” she said.