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On 22 August, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan upheld the sentence under the ‘foreign agent’ article against Farhad Navlyutov, a father of many children from Almetyevsk, a city in Tatarstan. This information appeared on the court’s website.

In June this year, Navlyutov was sentenced to two years and five months in a general-regime penal colony. The court considers that the man collected information on military activities that could be used by foreign sources against the security of the Russian Federation, and as such did not submit to the Ministry of Justice the documents for inclusion in the register of ‘foreign agents’ (Part 3 Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code). This sentence resulted from being combined with a previous conviction—under the article on illegal possession of drugs (Part 1 Article 228 of the Criminal Code).

Farhad Navlyutov worked at the Timur Islamov Foundation—a charitable organisation providing psychological and financial support to people who use drugs, those living with HIV and hepatitis C, as well as their loved ones and relatives. In 2018, the foundation was listed in the register of ‘foreign agents,’ after which Navlyutov and his colleagues created another organisation to help people who use drugs and their families—‘DEF.’

Navlyutov did not plead guilty. He stated that, through his work, he had repeatedly attended conferences and forums. At one of these events, the man met a Ukrainian citizen and spoke with her about discrimination against people who use drugs. Navlyutov emphasised that his work was not connected to politics—he undertook it as he himself had experienced addiction in the past.

Among the evidence for Navlyutov’s guilt, the court noted that he:

  • was a member of the ESUUN group (“Eurasian Network of People Who Use Drugs”), whose banner featured the Ukrainian flag;
  • left an insulting comment about police officers;
  • corresponded with a person whose page contained information “discrediting the Russian Armed Forces.”

The article under which Farhad Navlyutov was convicted is rarely applied. OVD-Info is aware of only two other such cases. In October last year, the French political scientist Laurent Vinatier was sentenced to three years in a penal colony under this article, and in 2023, the same article was used to detain “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. In summer 2024, Kurmasheva was released as part of a prisoner exchange with the West.

OVD-Info lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina comments: “To bring someone to justice under this article, it is necessary to establish that the person was indeed collecting information in the military or military-technical sphere that could be used by foreign entities. Such cases are rare precisely because the scope is very narrow: investigators need both to confirm ‘the collection of information’ and to explain why more serious charges such as treason are not applied. That is why there are almost no convictions under this provision in judicial statistics.”

Navlyutov has three underage children.