The Presnensky District Court of Moscow has sentenced 35-year-old blogger and businessperson Areg Shchepikhin to five years in a general-regime penal colony. Shchepikhin was found guilty on Monday of offending the feelings of believers, inciting hatred and enmity, and calling for extremism.
According to case materials, the prosecution was initiated over videos Shchepikhin had published on social media earlier in 2025, in which investigators claimed to see threats against ‘Chechens, Daghestanis, peoples of the Caucasus, Jews, and Muslims’.
As reported by Russian independent media outlet Mediazona, the court also imposed a two-and-a-half-year ban on administering websites. Prosecutors had sought a six-year sentence.
Shchepikhin denied the charges, stating that he had not posted the videos in question and that the materials presented by the prosecution ‘were seen by no one but himself and the investigator’.
Shchepikhin first came to public attention on 3 June, when he was abducted in broad daylight near Moscow’s Yaroslavsky railway station. Footage circulated online showed several bearded men forcing a man shouting for help into the boot of a Mercedes car fitted with a blue light and AMR-series number plates, which are often associated with people linked to the Chechen authorities. It was later confirmed that the abducted man was Areg Shchepikhin.
He later said that he had been taken outside Moscow, where the men tried to find out whether he had any connections with Ukraine or the opposition.
The following day, Chechnya’s Minister for National Policy, Akhmed Dudaev, stated that the blogger had been ‘detained by law enforcement officers who coordinated with relevant agencies in Moscow’ in connection with his ‘statements insulting to Muslims’. According to Dudaev, Shchepikhin ‘openly and publicly called for ethnic cleansing and Nazism’, a common charge leveled at perceived opponents of the authorities in Russia.
Meanwhile, sources cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe claimed that the abduction was carried out by people close to Russian MP from Chechnya, Adam Delimkhanov. The outlet Agentstvo reported that one of those involved may have been Chechen security officer Visaly Churchaev, who had previously fought in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine alongside Delimkhanov.
Following the incident, the Russian Investigative Committee announced a criminal case over abduction and abuse of power. According to Mediazona, six suspects were taken to the committee’s Moscow office but were soon released under travel restrictions. They are now reportedly at liberty in Chechnya.
Shchepikhin himself was detained the day after his abductors released him and has since been held in pre-trial detention.
Investigators claimed that in one of the videos, Shchepikhin ‘deliberately insulted objects of Muslim religious worship’ and ‘made discriminatory demands for people of certain nationalities and faiths to leave the territory of the Russian Federation’.
The blogger remains in custody pending the finalisation of the verdict. His defence team has stated that it intends to appeal the decision of the Presnensky District Court of Moscow.
Elizaveta Chukharova
