On July 16, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court ordered the pretrial detention of 55-year-old businessman and founder of the Paladin Military Union, Georgy Zakrevsky. As noted by Ostorozhno, Novosti, he is facing charges of justifying terrorism online.
Officials have not specified which exact publications formed the basis of the criminal case. According to Ostorozhno, Novosti, the prosecution may be linked to posts published in the Paladin Military Union Telegram channel.
Before the case was opened, Zakrevsky had publicly criticized Vladimir Putin. In his posts, he said Putin had “surrendered Donbas,” had “wiped himself with the Constitution,” and had “elevated lawlessness to an absolute.”
“If a person sits on the throne indefinitely and without control, then his lawlessness is boundless too, and his mind starts to slip. That is what we are now seeing, amplified by fear, impotence, and the awareness of an approaching collapse,” Zakrevsky wrote on his Telegram channel in April 2024.
At the same time, Zakrevsky himself took part in the fighting in Donbas in the 2010s as a combat training instructor. He also supported Russian troops involved in the invasion of Ukraine.
In addition, Zakrevsky offered rewards “for the heads” of foreign mercenaries and of a Ukrainian serviceman who had been suspected of extrajudicial killings.
His Telegram channel, which is believed to have stopped updating after his detention on July 14, has more than 6,000 subscribers. Zakrevsky’s YouTube channel has more than 76,000 subscribers.