Ex-political prisoner Ivan Astashin leaves Russia

Ex-political prisoner and writer for Novaya Gazeta. Europe, Ivan Astashin, has left Russia, reports human rights activist Anya Kurbatova on Facebook.

Astashin and Kurbatova are currently in Vilnius, according to her Facebook post.

In July, Astashin told Russian outlet SOTA that police agents had contacted his landlady in Saint Petersburg — he rented a room in her flat — and demanded she stop renting housing to the ex-political prisoner. Astashin lived there for a month and informed the police of changing his address, but he had not managed to acquire a temporary registration by that point.

In March, Moscow law enforcement agents detained Astashin for a “preventive conversation”. He was let go in the evening of the same day. Before that, he was detained on 27 February at a Moscow protest, afterwards he was fined 10,000 rubles (€170) over violation of the rules of conduct during public events.

Ashtanin, a person of interest in the case against the Combat Terrorist Organisation (recognised as terrorist organisation in Russia), was released from prison in September 2020. In 2012, he was sentenced to 13 years in a strict regime colony, later a Supreme Court reduced his term to nine years and nine months. Last year, a Krasnoyarsk court denied Astashin’s appeal on cancellation of the administrative supervision. According to the rules of the supervision, he was not allowed to leave his house from 10PM to 6AM during eight years after his release from prison.

Aside from Astashin, nine more people were charged over the case against the Combat Terrorist Organisation. They were found guilty of terrorism, illicit arms trafficking, manufacture of explosives, deliberate destruction of property, extremism, and calls for extremism.

Astashin is an author of Novaya Gazeta. Europe. We regularly publish chapters from his book Travelling among the places of incarceration, in which he shared his experience of almost ten years behind bars.