A resident of Perm has been sentenced to six years in a penal colony over a post featuring a hanging mannequin of Putin.

The Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced Perm activist Leonid Melekhin, who was deported from the United States, to six years in a general-regime penal colony on charges of justifying terrorism (Parts 1 and 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code). Mediazona reports. Melekhin has also been banned from administering websites and channels for two years.

One of the incidents cited in the case was a post in the Telegram channel of activist Yuriy Bobrov, titled “Beaver. There and Back Again (an immigration diary).” The post included a photo of Melekhin at a border crossing from Mexico to the United States and an image of a poster featuring a mannequin hanging from a rope, with a photograph of Vladimir Putin attached to it. The poster labelled Putin as a “murderer,” “fascist,” and “usurper,” and called to send the “fascist to the gallows.”

The case reached court already including two episodes of justifying terrorism. The second episode concerns a comment posted online, but its content is unknown. Since May, the trial has been held behind closed doors: prosecutors said this was due to the “increased terrorist threat” in Sverdlovsk Region and the need not to disclose operational and investigative methods.

In summer 2024, Melekhin applied for political asylum in the United States, but was denied. Until July 2025, he was held in a migration detention centre in Arizona. His former court-appointed lawyer, Valery Kuznetsov, told Mediazona that Melekhin was aware of the criminal case and “asked to be sent back” to Russia.