Search
On 8 April, former head of the Serpukhov district near Moscow, Alexander Shestun, announced a dry hunger strike. He shared this himself in a letter published by RusNews.
Since 30 March, Shestun had been on a regular hunger strike. He wrote that he stopped drinking water on 7 April, and the next day officially informed Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) staff that he was beginning a dry hunger strike.
The politician is currently in the FSIN hospital in Torzhok, a town in Tver Region, north-west of Moscow. Through his hunger strike, he is demanding:
- a long meeting with his children, which had been disrupted at Penal Colony No. 6 in Bezhetsk, a town in Tver Region;
- to be given a list of appeals he submitted to oversight bodies, including the dates they were sent;
- urgent medical care, and official recognition that the refusal to provide it was unlawful.
Shestun was told that he was brought to the hospital for a medical panel and: “we cannot treat you.” Meanwhile, three of his teeth have fallen out, and fragments of another are cutting his mouth and tongue, causing bleeding.
“Three of my front teeth were knocked out by FSIN staff in Tver Region. One tooth was knocked out by the head of Remand Prison No. 1, Lebedev, in 2021. I had a prosthetic fitted, but that too was knocked out by staff at Penal Colony No. 6 in Bezhetsk when force was used on 1 December 2025, along with two other teeth,” the politician writes.
According to Shestun, during his hunger strike he lost seven kilograms and fainted twice, injuring his face as a result. He also reminded readers that he has diabetes, “which worsens the harm to my health.” He is refusing vitamin C with glucose.
Shestun has previously declared hunger strikes in protest against violations of his rights in detention, and in December 2025 he cut his veins while in a solitary-type cell.
Most recently, he announced a hunger strike in early March, then while being held at Penal Colony No. 6 in Bezhetsk. FSIN staff disrupted his long meeting with his family by sending Shestun to a punishment cell (SHIZO). When he ended that previous hunger strike is unclear.
The Free 120 campaign, which advocates for the release of seriously ill political prisoners, appealed to Tatyana Moskalkova, the Federal Human Rights Ombudsperson, the Tver Region Ombudsperson Nadezhda Yegorova, and journalist Eva Merkacheva, who is a member of the Human Rights Council. Free 120 is asking them to check the conditions of Shestun’s detention and the medical care he receives.
15 April Shestun was discharged from the prison hospital on 10 April, according to his support group’s Telegram channel.
The politician said that a deputy head of the hospital discharged him for “violating the treatment and protection regime” by “not following the prescribed diet (hunger strike) despite having diabetes.”
Shestun was transferred to Remand Prison No. 1 in Tver. According to the politician, during the transfer he had to drink water: “otherwise I simply wouldn’t have made it to the prison van.” Once in the remand centre, he was sent to a punishment cell for five days because he had dried towels on the bedframe; Shestun noted that the towel hooks had been torn off.
He also described new health problems: “In the central block, I went to the toilet with unbearable sharp pain and passed blood clots in my urine. I continue refusing food, weight loss now totals 16 kilograms.”
14 May Alexander Shestun said he was sent to a punishment cell for another 10 days. He informed OVD-Info of this in a letter passed on by an acquaintance.
He was placed in the punishment cell after a visit to Remand Prison No. 1 by the first deputy head of the Tver Region FSIN, Sergey Mefed. Shestun writes that on 22 April, Mefed “held an hour-long personal meeting” in his cell. The politician told Mefed that his complaints to the oversight authorities were not being sent from the remand prison, and that one staff member, Dmitry Vodoleev, told him directly his appeals would not be sent, and threatened him.
“We’ll lock you up in the old wing, where no one will hear the screams from electric shockers or blows to your kidneys and groin,” is the threat from a staff member that the politician quoted in his letter.
According to Shestun, Mefed “reacted ambiguously” to this information. The remand centre staff still have not started passing on his complaints to the oversight authorities, and he himself was put in a punishment cell—which Shestun believes was for “airing dirty laundry in public.”
The politician wrote that he was still on hunger strike and, as of 4 May, weighed 72 kg (earlier he weighed 95 kg). He said that in the cold SHIZO cell, cramps in his ankles and hands had worsened.
He also described how on 25 April, during a cell inspection, duty officer Pyotr Reshetov took all his warm clothes, crushed his pills, then dragged Shestun by the collar “like a bull to slaughter,” striking his head against the door frame.
On 12 May, Shestun’s support group channel reported his hospitalisation in the regional hospital in Torzhok as a result of his serious condition from the hunger strike.
- Shestun has been in detention since 2018. In 2020 he was sentenced to 15 years in a penal colony on charges of fraud (Part 4 Art. 159 Criminal Code), bribery (Part 6 Art. 290), unlawful entrepreneurship (Art. 289), and money laundering (clause “b” Part 4 Art. 174.1). Shestun denied all charges and called his prosecution politically motivated.
- Shortly before his 2018 arrest, the politician recorded a video appeal in which he described threats from the governor of Moscow Region, Andrey Vorobyov. The governor demanded that Shestun ban a protest against the “Lesnaya” landfill and not run for another term. Shestun also released a recording of a conversation with the head of the FSB’s “K” Department, Ivan Tkachev, the head of the Presidential Domestic Policy Directorate, Andrey Yarin, and the head of the Moscow Region Administration, Mikhail Kuznetsov. In the recording, they tried to persuade him to resign.
- In 2022, he was convicted in a new case: insulting a judge (Part 2 Art. 297 Criminal Code), insulting a public official (Art. 319), and making threats in connection with the administration of justice (Part 1 Art. 296). In this case, Shestun admitted to the insults but not the threats. His sentence was increased by another six months.