On December 18, 2025, Yekaterinburg human rights defender Alexey Sokolov, who had been detained the previous day, was formally charged under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers high treason. Two days earlier, on December 16, security forces searched the homes of Sokolov and his associates Roman Kachanov and Larisa Zakharova. All three were later deprived of liberty: Sokolov was jailed in the treason case, while his colleagues were arrested in a case on organizing the activities of an “undesirable” organization.
The prosecution comes amid a sharp rise in treason convictions in Russia. There were 16 such convictions in 2022 and 39 in 2023, but according to available court statistics, 145 people were convicted under the same article in 2024.
Sokolov is known for many years of work defending prisoners’ rights and collecting evidence of torture in the prison system. Since the mid-2000s he has handled inmates’ complaints, and in 2005 he founded the organization Pravovaya Osnova. He became widely known for work connected with abuses in IK-2 in Yekaterinburg, where rights defenders documented beatings, torture, and the use of selected inmates to pressure other prisoners.
In 2007, Sokolov published the film “Torture Factory, or a Pedagogical Experiment,” based on the materials he had gathered. He later took part in investigating events in a penal colony in Kopeysk, after which he himself was prosecuted: in 2010 he was sentenced to five years in prison, and the Memorial Human Rights Center recognized him as a political prisoner. In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights found violations in his case and awarded him 10,000 euros in compensation.
Pressure intensified again in 2024 after video emerged showing the humiliation of a prisoner at a Federal Penitentiary Service facility. Sokolov was then accused of displaying “extremist symbols” because of links to Facebook. On July 5, 2024, he was placed in pretrial detention and was released under travel restrictions in January 2025.
“In fact, I was gathering information in order to appeal to the Committee against Torture,” Sokolov told journalists in court, describing the basis of the current accusation.
He also said he does not admit guilt and that he had been engaged in lawful activity protected by the Russian Constitution, federal law, and the UN Charter. The court ordered him held in custody until mid-February 2026. The treason charge carries a possible sentence of 12 to 20 years in prison or life imprisonment.