Russian programmer gets 13-year prison sentence for treason after FSB held him in isolation and assets disappeared from his crypto wallet

A court in Irkutsk has sentenced programmer Vadim Nekrashchuk to 13 years in a high-security penal colony on treason charges, the outlet People of Baikal reported, citing a courtroom observer.

Nekrashchuk was also fined 268,000 rubles. Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence.

Investigators said Nekrashchuk photographed a checkpoint at a military base and sent its geolocation to a suspected Ukrainian intelligence officer.

He was detained in the spring of 2025. At one of the hearings, he told the court that he spent two days in an FSB detention facility. For nearly the entire time, he said, he was kept in a black opaque hood; at night, he was handcuffed at the hands and feet.

An investigator then offered him a choice, he said: transfer to a pretrial detention center, or enter a state protection program and move to a safe house. Nekrashchuk chose the latter and remained there until June 23, 2025 — more than three and a half months.

At the safe house, he was kept in complete isolation, with no contact with the outside world. He could not go outside, approach a window, or engage in any physical activity.

During this period, when only FSB officers had access to his devices, roughly 150,000 rubles’ worth of assets were stolen from his cryptocurrency wallet. Nekrashchuk learned of the theft after being transferred to a pretrial detention center — where he was sent regardless — and signed a confession there.

The Telegram channel SotaVision reported that military prosecutors acknowledged the theft but declined to open a criminal case. Journalists did not specify why or when that decision was made.

At trial, the defense argued that information about the military base Nekrashchuk allegedly photographed is publicly available on internet maps.