Eldar Kabardaev

Resident of St. Petersburg, labourer. On 28 January 2025, he was detained and sent to custody the next day on charges of public justification of terrorism. Later he was also accused of calling for extremism. SOTA claims that in 2022 he published two comments in an Islamist telegram chat room justifying "the Nogai and Circassian battalions, which are on the Russian Federation's list of terrorist organisations, and also posted two more files with bomb assembly instructions." However, as of 2022 there were no such battalions on the list of terrorist organisations, and the names associated with the Nogai and Circassian movements did not appear there until December 2024. Kabardaev himself claimed that he acted within the framework of operational activities agreed with an FSB officer. At the trial, he said that when he was working at the hotel, the officer asked him to send him the passport details of Middle Eastern citizens who had checked in. He agreed and also offered to infiltrate some extremist cell. According to Kabardaev, the interlocutor approved the idea "to work on this Circassian organisation", but then disappeared. SOTA notes that the case file contains a certificate from the FSB that Kabardaev has never been involved in operational activities. On 17 November 2025, Kabardaev was sentenced to six years in a general regime colony.