Administrators of Russian railway photo site RailGallery arrested in Moscow
On October 14, a Moscow court ordered the arrest of two administrators of the railway enthusiast site RailGallery on suspicion of illegally accessing and publishing data. They face five to ten years in prison.
A Moscow court on October 14 ordered the arrest of Denis Eskov, 35, and Anatoly Nagornov, 40, administrators of RailGallery, a website devoted to railway photography. Investigators accuse them of unlawful interference with critical information infrastructure: they allegedly accessed data illegally and posted it on the site. The charge carries five to ten years in prison. The site is among the largest communities of Russian railway enthusiasts, and photographs of special trains have repeatedly appeared on it.
What is known about the case
The Joint Press Service of Moscow Courts has not said which organization investigators consider the victim or what exactly was published. The statute cited refers to "serious consequences", but these have not been explained.
The anonymous Telegram channel VChK-OGPU links the case to ASUT, a system Russian Railways, the state rail operator, uses to manage locomotives and other resources. According to the channel, the administrators used access to it to find where locomotives were and tell photographers where to find them. Three sources in the community said the archive was expanded this way, among other methods. Yegor, an acquaintance of Nagornov, says both men had access because they worked for organizations affiliated with Russian Railways. Leaked data shows Nagornov was listed in 2022 as deputy head of a railway electrical engineering laboratory.
The site stopped loading the day after the detentions. Its team said the arrests were a complete surprise and did not say whether it would keep operating.
Putin's train
RailGallery and similar sites have repeatedly carried photographs of special trains, including Vladimir Putin's armored train, the subject of a 2023 investigation by Dossier Center. Photographer Mikhail Korotkov photographed that train in the Novgorod region in 2018. The Kremlin said Putin "neither owns nor uses" it. Korotkov has since left Russia, and says that after the arrests similar channels stopped posting or were deleted.
In October 2026 the RailGallery archive held more than 324,000 photographs.
