Russian opposition activist Georgy Pirogov, abducted in Uzbekistan, sentenced to 23 years

The Moscow City Court has sentenced Georgy Pirogov, a 37-year-old from the Moscow region, to 23 years in a maximum-security penal colony, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported, citing a source familiar with the ruling. The court also imposed a fine of 800,000 rubles.

After Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, Pirogov moved to Georgia, where he worked as an industrial climber. In July 2024, he traveled to Kungrad, Uzbekistan, on a work assignment and dropped out of contact. It later emerged that he was being held at the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center in Moscow.

People close to Pirogov say he had planned to return to Georgia from Uzbekistan. How he ended up in Russia is unknown. They told the Politzek-Info project that he had been abducted.

The details of the charges brought against Pirogov have not been disclosed. At an August 2024 hearing on his appeal against his detention, the court said only that he had admitted guilt and expressed remorse.

Several known cases of Russians living in third countries disappearing and later turning up in Russian pretrial detention centers have been reported. In 2023, Lev Skoryakin, an activist with the Left Bloc charged with hooliganism in Russia, disappeared in Kyrgyzstan and was later found in a Moscow pretrial detention center; he managed to leave Russia and won asylum in Germany. That same year, Rafail Shepelev, a member of the Artpodgotovka movement, disappeared in Tbilisi; human rights advocates found him in a pretrial detention center in Nizhny Tagil. Shepelev was declared legally insane and committed to compulsory psychiatric treatment.