Eldar Marchenko

Resident of Moscow, lecturer in sports management at RMA Business School. In 2022, wrote several columns for the independent publication "Vot Tak" (Here's So).

On 1 August 2024, FSB officers searched Marchenko's home without providing any documents. He was then taken for interrogation to the FSB Directorate in Lubyanka. On the way, he was tortured with electricity, forcing him to sign a confession of working for the Ukrainian intelligence agency. Marchenko's defense filed a complaint about the use of torture to the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee, but received no response.

Immediately after that Marchenko was arrested several times in a row under administrative articles, the arrests he served in the Sakharovo detention centre for foreign citizens. On 2 August he was sentenced to 15 days under the article on petty hooliganism (part 2 of article 20.1 of the Administrative Code). According to the published decision, Marchenko was swearing in the street and refused to show his passport to the police.

Immediately after the end of the first arrest, on 17 August, the teacher was again arrested for 15 days, this time under part 1 of the same article. Marchenko was sentenced to a third arrest - for 10 days - on 2 September. In both cases, he was again allegedly swearing in a public place, this time near the Centre for temporary detention of foreign citizens.

On 11 September 2024, the man was again detained at the exit from the center for temporary detention of foreign citizen and taken to an unknown location. Later it turned out that he was taken to the State Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee. The next day Marchenko was taken into custody on charges of committing a terrorist act. In March 2025, state news agency TASS reported that, according to the case materials, Marchenko gave the coordinates of an airfield in Kursk to the AFU for strikes against it. Later it was reported that Marchenko was also accused of coordinating other strikes on Kursk, as well as on the Rostov region. It was alleged that his case was merged with the case of attacks on Rostov region in 2022, opened on February 19, 2022, under the articles on the organisation of mass murder in a generally dangerous manner by an organised group, attempt on the life of a law enforcement officer, illegal border crossing by an organised group, deliberate destruction of property motivated by hatred or enmity and commission of a terrorist act by an organised group with serious consequences (Marchenko was charged only with this article).

On 12 August 2025, Marchenko was sentenced to 16 years in a strict regime colony.

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