Andrei Pirogov

Andrei lived in Volzhsky (Volgograd Oblast) and worked as a cashier before moving to Podolsk (Moscow Oblast), where he was employed as a power engineer, presumably at a shopping centre. According to official reports, he was detained on 26 April 2025 in Serpukhov, Moscow Oblast, because he was “squatting and searching for something in the ground” near a railway and began to “behave defiantly and aggressively” in response to police questioning. On 28 April, he was sentenced to 10 days of administrative detention for disorderly misconduct (Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences).

On 6 May, after serving that sentence, he was reportedly taken to Chekhov, where he was detained again; the next day, the court sentenced him to seven days under the same article. When that sentence expired, Pirogov was reportedly taken to Troitsk (New Moscow), where, according to the police report, he was detained on the night of 14 May. That same day, the court sentenced him to 15 days.

In the early hours of 29 May, at the end of that term, Pirogov was detained once again, this time in the Sokol district in northern Moscow (about an hour’s drive from Troitsk). The court imposed another 13-day detention under the same article. On the night of 11 June, at the end of this term, Pirogov was allegedly found in another northern district of Moscow, near Seligerskaya metro station, where he was reportedly drinking alcohol. This time, he was charged with failure to comply with a lawful order of a police officer (Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences) and sentenced to five days in detention.

On the night of 16 June, after serving that term, Pirogov was detained once more in Troitsk, near the migration centre. The same day, the court again sentenced him to 15 days under the petty hooliganism article. In the early morning of 1 July, he was allegedly found in the Chertanovo district in southern Moscow and again sentenced to 15 days. On the night of 16 July, he was once more detained near the migration centre in Troitsk and sentenced to another 15 days.

His next detention formally took place in the early morning of 31 July in western Moscow, on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, and again resulted in a 15-day sentence. In the early morning of 15 August, Pirogov was reportedly found yet again near the migration centre in Troitsk. After serving another 15-day sentence, he was apparently transferred to Podolsk, where he lived, and on 2 September, the local court sentenced him to five days for “urinating in a public place.”

After the expiration of this final administrative sentence, Pirogov was reportedly detained under a criminal case for espionage and taken into custody.