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A resident of Kasli, a town in Chelyabinsk region in the Urals, has been placed in a pre-trial detention centre (SIZO) on charges of financing extremist activities (Article 282.3 Part 1 of the Russian Criminal Code). This was reported by TASS and URA.RU, citing the regional FSB press office.
The name of the person detained has not been disclosed. TASS quotes the FSB statement: “The illegal activities of a resident of Kasli, born in 1979, have been uncovered. FSB officers have established that the citizen, being a supporter of an extremist organisation, was involved in financing it.”
The specific organisation the man is accused of financing has not been named. According to URA.RU, its activities were “aimed at organising mass unrest in the country.” The research centre SOVA suggests that it is referring to the “Artpodgotovka” movement.
- On 5 November 2017, supporters of Vyacheslav Maltsev, who runs the popular YouTube channel “Artpodgotovka,” took to the streets in various Russian cities—the activist had promised that a revolution would take place on that day. As a result, according to OVD-Info, criminal proceedings were opened in at least 10 cities against at least 35 people, including on terrorist charges.
- In the years that followed, law enforcement repeatedly opened criminal cases against alleged supporters of “Artpodgotovka.” In early September, a court sentenced Andrey Dyukin, a resident of Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia, to 10 years in a penal colony over charges of financing extremist activity and facilitating terrorism (Article 205.1 Part 1.1 of the Criminal Code). Recently, it also emerged that a former dispatcher of Moscow’s GBU ZhIlischnik has been arrested on similar charges of financing “Artpodgotovka.”