Russian woman who lived in Ukraine for over a decade charged with treason after returning to Moscow to renew passport
Russian citizen Svetlana Golovatenko, who lived in Kyiv for more than ten years, has been charged with treason after flying to Moscow to replace her expired passport. She had previously been detained repeatedly on administrative charges and held for weeks.
Russian authorities have opened a criminal treason case against Svetlana Golovatenko, a Russian citizen who lived in Ukraine for more than a decade, after she traveled to Moscow to replace her documents.
Golovatenko was born in Severoonezhsk, in Russia's Arkhangelsk region. For over ten years she lived in Kyiv, working as a manicurist and pedicurist, and held a Ukrainian residence permit. Her parents and brother still live in Russia.
Independent Russian outlet Mediazona reported that Golovatenko flew to Russia via Georgia on April 23 to replace her expired internal passport and re-register her home in Donetsk.
Detention and repeated sentences
She was detained in the arrivals hall of Moscow's Vnukovo Airport. The following day she was jailed for 15 days on an administrative charge of "petty hooliganism." Police then filed seven more identical charges, with the cases heard in several courts, including in the Kaluga region.
A Moscow court issued the last of these 15-day sentences on August 4. After that term ended, Mediazona reported, authorities apparently opened the criminal treason case against her.
Similar case: Loshchinin
In June 2026, a court in Pskov sentenced Mikhail Loshchinin, a dual Russian and Belgian citizen, to 16 years in a penal colony on treason charges. He had been traveling to St. Petersburg to visit his ailing father. According to his support group, Loshchinin was held in custody for a month and a half before charges were filed. The case was based on a 2022 exchange of messages with his Ukrainian ex-girlfriend, in which she had asked him for money.
