A resident of Komi, convicted over comments about the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and the Freedom of Russia Legion, has been transferred to a penal colony.

Ilya Chugaev, a resident of Syktyvkar, was convicted over comments about the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps and has now been transferred to Penal Colony No. 14 in Arkhangelsk region. This was reported by the project “Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial.”

In November, Chugaev was sentenced to three years in a penal colony under the article for “justifying terrorism” (Art. 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code). He was also banned from posting online for two years.

Chugaev was detained and sent to a pre-trial detention centre in August. He was accused of making comments in support of the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps from his personal account on a “popular video hosting service” between August 2023 and August 2024. As “7×7” notes, the verdict was handed down at the very first hearing, suggesting a guilty plea.

Chugaev is from a small village where the Komi language is mainly spoken. His elderly, sick mother remains there; before his arrest, he had planned to move her to Syktyvkar with him. Now the neighbours are looking after her, writes the Komi Political Prisoner telegram channel. “I am mentally prepared for the sentence, I try not to lose heart. The darkest night is before dawn, so in the end stavys loas bur (‘everything will be fine’—in Komi),” the man wrote from detention, a month before his trial.

You can support the prisoner by sending him a letter through the ‘F-letter’ and ‘Zonatelecom’ services:

165115, Arkhangelsk region, Velsky district, Gorka Muravyevskaya village, Spetsgorodok St., 1a, Federal Correctional Institution IK-14, Arkhangelsk Region, Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, Ilya Ivanovich Chugaev, born 1990.