“He believed it was his homeland”. An IT specialist’s trip home to Russia ends in a 15‑year “treason” sentence for a $500 donation to Ukraine

— “What’s your attitude towards the current government?”
— “Negative.”
— “Have you participated in protests?”
— “I have.”

This is how the sofware engineer Sergei Irin answers an officer in a video clip circulated by the FSB. The former employee of Yandex, Russia’s IT giant, then 44, was detained on May 1, 2024, in his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod. He had returned after two years abroad to see his elderly mother and brother and to meet old friends. “As far as I know, he wasn’t planning on staying long,” says his longtime friend, Artyom Razov.

FSB officers accosted Irin as he was leaving a temporary detention facility, where he had been held for five days on a minor charge of “petty hooliganism”. Serving a short administrative sentence before levelling serious criminal charges is a standard FSB tactic.

The officers roughly threw Irin to the pavement, handcuffed him, and immediately stated the reason for his arrest: suspicion of treason under Article 275 of the Criminal code.

In the arrest video, an FSB officer asks Irin if he had transferred money “to the territory of foreign states or international foundations”. Irin answered honestly that he had. On February 27, 2022, the third day of the invasion, he donated $500 to the Ukrainian foundation “Come Back Alive”.

In the first days of the war, many Russians donated to Ukrainian foundations while they still could. “Come Back Alive” is one of the largest, providing the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) with equipment such as thermal imagers, vehicles, drones and medical supplies. In May 2024, the Russian authorities outlawed it as an “undesirable” organisation.

That single bank transfer two years ago was the sole basis for Irin’s prosecution. He sent the money from a Russian card before Western sanctions cut them off from the global financial system. As Irin recalled in a letter from prison, he wanted to support Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion.

“He still stands by it. He admits everything. Yes, he made [the transfer], and what’s more, he did it deliberately, wanting to help Ukraine,” says Viktor Osipov, one of Irin’s relatives. “That’s his position. He supports Ukraine, so he made the transfer. And he continues to support it now.”

It is unclear whether Irin remembered this single transaction or fully understood the risks of returning. By the spring of 2024, prosecuting citizens for treason over donations to Ukraine had become routine. But in the end, he did not cancel his trip.

After two years away, the programmer returned home from Sri Lanka in April 2024, landing at a Moscow airport. From there, he travelled to Nizhny Novgorod, the city of his childhood, where he planned to visit family and go kayaking with friends.

The trip cost Irin his freedom. After his arrest, he wrote in his letters, he was “interrogated with an electric shock device and flown to Moscow, to the Lefortovo detention centre”.

How the FSB tracks donations

Any Russian who has donated to a Ukrainian organisation since February 2022 is a target for the FSB. For those who used Russian bank cards, the state’s reach is long.

It is simple for the security services to identify donors who, like Irin, made transfers in the first weeks of the invasion before Visa and Mastercard pulled out of Russia. In some cases, security services find compromising transactions in a foreign banking app on a person’s phone; Russians returning from abroad are often ordered to unlock their devices right at the border crossing. Banks are also required to report suspicious activity to Russia’s financial intelligence unit, Rosfinmonitoring, which then shares the data with the security services. A criminal treason case may only be a matter of time.

This is what happened to Tatyana Laletina, an artist from Tomsk. On the first day of the war, she sent $10 from her state-owned Sberbank card to a Ukrainian fund. Investigators later discovered another $20 transfer she made in April 2022. Laletina was not arrested until two years later. A few months after that, she was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.

“Any donations from Russian accounts are automatically identified by banks as high-risk operations,” explains Ilya Shumanov, founder of the investigative project Arktida. With this data, security services appear to be selectively targeting both Russians living in the country and those, like Irin, who return from abroad.

The authorities also track cryptocurrency wallets used to support Ukraine. In late May, a court began hearing the case of Artem Khoroshilov, a 34-year-old physicist accused of treason. Before the war, he had sent money to “Come Back Alive” and the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, another large fund that supports the Ukrainian army. The investigation alleges Khoroshilov eventually switched to cryptocurrency, with his donations totalling about $8,700 by December 2022. He is still awaiting a verdict.

The border phone check

Trips to Russia are also dangerous for those who donated from foreign bank accounts. At border crossings, security officers frequently demand that travellers unlock their phones for inspection, where they scroll through banking apps, messages and photos.

This is how officers discovered a donation made by Ksenia Karelina, 34, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen. In early 2024, she flew from the U.S. to her family’s home in Yekaterinburg.

“I told her, this is not the best time to go to Russia,” her boyfriend, Chris van Heerden, recalled. “But she was so naive, because she doesn’t watch the news, she doesn’t want to hear anything bad about Russia, she is so proud [to be Russian].”

The FSB accused Karelina of treason for a single donation of $52 to Razom for Ukraine, a U.S.-based charity. At passport control, she was taken for questioning and her iPhone was confiscated. Days before her flight home, she was arrested. Initially given a 14-day administrative sentence, she was then moved to a pre-trial detention centre on treason charges.

Karelina was sentenced to 12 years but was freed eight months later in a prisoner exchange.

In April 2024, Yevgeny Varaksin, a former employee at a plant run by the state nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, received the same 12-year sentence. According to investigators, he donated 100 Polish złoty (about $25) to Caritas Poland, a Catholic humanitarian organisation, while living in Poland in 2022. He was arrested two years later upon his return to Russia after officers found the transaction on his smartphone during a border check.

From official “warnings” to life sentences

In the summer of 2022, Russia’s legal definition of treason was expanded to include “siding with the enemy”. Since then, anyone can be accused of treason not only for alleged contact with Ukrainian intelligence but for simply sending money.

The FSB’s campaign began with official “warnings”. Armed special forces would raid a person’s home and read them a document stating that financial support for Ukraine “creates the conditions” for committing treason, with videos online to follow. According to Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with the legal aid group First Departement, officers used these visits to seize electronics and gain access to social media accounts.

A year later, the “warnings” escalated into criminal cases (although, the “warnings” still happen). In April 2023, Vladimir Putin signed a law that increased the maximum penalty for treason to life imprisonment. The security services are primarily interested in foundations that directly aid the Ukrainian military, but even donations to purely humanitarian groups are not safe from the FSB’s interpretation.

The amount donated is irrelevant. A resident of the Moscow region Alexander Kraychik was sentenced to 13 years for a $50 donation. Transgender activist Mark Kislitsyn received 12 years for transferring just 865 roubles (about $11).

“Sergei believed it was his homeland, so he could return”

Despite the risks, many exiled Russians continue to visit home. “I have my mum and dad, and I miss them, and they miss me. How can I not visit?” says journalist Olga Filimonova. “The problem is that no one knows when the last time will be. I am sure that I have the right to go home. This is my home. They can all go to hell.”

Initially, Filimonova was not deterred by her “foreign agent” status, nor by the fact that the publication where she worked had been declared an “undesirable organisation” by the Russian authorities. However, amid news of criminal cases against everyone, including journalists, she decided to refrain from travelling to Russia for the time being.

Sergei Irin was always politically active. Friends say he attended the large-scale 2011–2012 Bolotnaya Square protests in Moscow and later marched in memory of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, he joined the anti-war protests and was fined.

He loved hiking, cycling and kayaking. “He always knew how to stay calm in the face of adversity,” says his friend Artyom Razov. “He is a fairly resilient person.”

After Russia’s announcement of a military mobilisation in autumn 2022, Irin, who had recently left Yandex, moved first to Turkey and then to Sri Lanka. After two years away, missing his family and friends, he decided to return.

“Sergei believed that Russia was his homeland, and that he could return there,” explains his relative, Viktor Osipov.

Irin’s friends have started a public channel on Telegram to support him. He has accepted he will receive a long sentence and has nothing to lose. In one phone call, he outlined his plan for the trial: “I want to go down as loudly as possible.”

At his first hearing on July 22, he received two warnings from the judge after asking a witness to pass on the message that “Putin is a dickhead!”.

When the verdict was announced on August 26, Irin held up a poster with the same words. He refused to stand for the judge. He was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security penal colony.

Editor: Egor Skovoroda