Russian serviceman who threatened Putin with mutiny freed after 11 days in jail

A Russian serviceman who recorded a video address to Vladimir Putin threatening a military mutiny has been freed after 11 days of administrative detention. Alexander Lunin announced his release on social media, and the independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo confirmed the news.

Lunin walked out of a detention facility in Russia’s Voronezh region on July 8. In the early hours of July 9, a video appeared on his social media in which he says he had “lost a little weight, grown some stubble, but everything is fine.” He said he had already arrived in Moscow.

The day before, Vitaly Borodin, the head of the Federal Project on Security and Anti-Corruption and a known informant, posted a photo with Lunin on his Telegram channel. “Alexander Lunin is alive and well, everything is good with him. We were by his side the whole time,” Borodin said.

Alexander Lunin is a serviceman from Russia’s Voronezh region who took part in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. He actively posted video addresses to Vladimir Putin on social media.

In late June, in one of his videos, Lunin demanded that the president invite him to the Kremlin and listen to ‘the whole truth’ about what is happening in Russia — including problems in the military — live on air. He threatened a military mutiny if Putin refused. The video garnered millions of views on Instagram.

It soon emerged that Lunin’s home had been searched and that he himself had been placed under administrative arrest under a statute on displaying extremist or Nazi symbols (Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code). The formal grounds for the case remain unknown.

Commenting on Lunin’s address, the Kremlin said it had not seen the video itself but considered it to contain “rather strange formulations.”