Vyacheslav Popov

Resident of Kaliningrad. On 6 May 2022, he was searched at home, after which a video was made public in which Popov says that around 2008 he "got in touch with the commander of the Kaluga branch of the Right Sector, Leonid Butusin". At the same time, as the Novy Kaliningrad edition notes, Right Sector emerged only in 2013, and there were no reports of a branch of the banned organisation in the Kaluga region. Leonid Butusin is the son of Right Sector activist Oleg Butusin, who was killed in Ukraine in April. Popov was taken into custody. He was previously an activist of the Baltic Vanguard of Russian Resistance movement, whose other members were sentenced to real prison terms in 2020 in a case on extremist community activities. Popov's acquaintance Anastasia Nekhaeva, whose flat was inspected as part of the criminal case, claimed in a conversation with Mediazona that he opposed the war, but never said anything about ties with nationalist associations there. Popov himself did not admit guilt at first, but later changed his testimony. On 29 March 2023, he was sentenced to nine years in a strict regime colony. On 24 July, the court of appeal reduced the sentence by three months. In 2025, Popov was informed that he was deprived of Russian citizenship.