Rafail Shepelev

Participant of "Artpodgotovka". Since September 2021 he lived in Georgia. According to human rights defenders, on 12 October 2023, he left his house in Tbilisi and disappeared. His personal belongings were left at home. Later it became known that he went by taxi to the village of Kirbali near the border zone with South Ossetia. There he went up to the local church where Russian military personnel are stationed. After the young man approached them, he was taken to the territory of the region that doesn't not fall within Georgian control.

Later, on 15 October 2024, at the first court hearing in the criminal case, Shepelev said that while in Georgia, he decided to join the Freedom of Russia Legion. An acquaintance who introduced himself as Serhiy Garkusha, the head of the Ukrainian party "Movement of New Forces" founded by Mikhail Saakashvili, brought Shepelev together with some people whom he certified as SBU agents. They offered the activist to help them from Georgia, he refused. Later Shepelev decided to join the regiment, which Vyacheslav Maltsev, the leader of "Artpodgotovka", was allegedly going to create. The alleged SBU agents promised to help the activist, but in return they asked him to transport three parcels from Batumi to Verkhny Lars, where there is a Russian border checkpoint on the border with Georgia. According to them, the boxes contained parts from an explosive device. Shepelev delivered two parcels, but refused to hand over the third until Maltsev personally contacted him. The alleged agents promised to take him to Poland, but before that they asked him to deliver the parcels to a village on the border with the Tskhinvali region of South Ossetia. It was there that he was detained by Russian security forces.

On 13 October 2023, the day after Shepelev's disappearance, a card of Shepelev's administrative case of disorderly conduct (part 1 of article 20.1 of the Administrative Code of Administrative Offences) appeared on the website of the Soviet District Court of Vladikavkaz. He was sentenced to administrative arrest, and after his release he was sent to a pre-trial detention facility on the case of participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation and public justification of terrorism.

On 18 April 2024, it became known that Shepelev was assigned compulsory treatment. Medical expertise diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. On 3 December 2024, the court decided to terminate criminal prosecution and forced hospitalisation of the activist.