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The Paninsky District Court in Voronezh Region has sentenced activist Grigory Severin to three years in a high-security penal colony for a repeat offence of “discrediting the army” (Article 280.3, Part 1 of the Russian Criminal Code). His supporters reported this.

In 2024, Severin was fined twice on administrative charges of discrediting the army (Article 20.3.3, Part 1 of the Russian Administrative Code). He received one fine after a conversation with a traffic police officer about the army, and the second after speaking with prison staff during a disciplinary commission in which he criticised Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.

The basis for the criminal case was conversations with other inmates during his first sentence. Security forces claimed that Severin attempted to dissuade them from going to war, spoke about the Russian army dispersing protesters in the occupied part of Kherson Region, and about the torture of local residents. At the trial, it emerged that Severin’s cell in the punishment isolation block had been bugged at the time.

Severin was detained and arrested last April—eight months after being released from prison on his first case. At the same time, searches were carried out at several activists’ homes in Voronezh. Three of them reported having been tortured. One of the survivors said he was forced to sign incriminating testimony against Severin.

  • In 2022, Severin was sentenced to two years in a penal settlement for “calls for extremism” (Article 280, Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code). According to investigators, on 19 December 2019, the activist published a post about a shooting outside the FSB building on Lubyanka, with the comment ‘stab the Chekists.’ Severin denied guilt and insisted that his page had been hacked.
  • Towards the end of his sentence he was transferred to a general regime colony. In August 2023, Severin was released, but a year later he was sent back to prison to serve another 84 days. The court ruled that the time he’d spent under house arrest had been miscalculated. Finally, the activist was released in September 2024.
  • Severin is a Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (PhD equivalent). Before the criminal cases, he tutored privately. Severin took part in numerous protest actions. In January 2021, for a solitary picket in support of Navalny, he received five days in jail, and in 2020 he was fined for an act of solidarity with residents of Khabarovsk Krai in the Russian Far East.