Kremlin denies reports connecting Putin aide to persecution of historian Yuri Dmitriev

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed as a false report from the investigative outlet Proekt connecting Putin’s aide Anatoly Seryshev to the persecution of 64-year-old historian and activist Yuri Dmitriev, who previously led the Karelian chapter of the human rights group Memorial.

“I saw this publication. It’s all wrong...as regards Seryshev — it’s all wrong. This is either a deliberate or an unintentional mistake,” Peskov told reporters on Thursday, February 18.

Yuri Dmitriev’s case

In December 2016, Yuri Dmitriev was accused of sexually abusing his underage foster daughter and using her to create child pornography. In April 2018, a court acquitted Dmitriev of the two charges, but convicted him of illegal firearms possession and sentenced him to 3.5 years of strict probation. Karelia’s Supreme Court later overturned the acquittal.

In June 2018, reports emerged that the Russian authorities had launched another criminal case against Dmitriev for violent sexual assault against the same underage girl. Dmitriev was convicted and sentenced to 3.5 years in a maximum security penal colony. But in September 2020, Karelia’s Supreme Court opted to overturn this ruling and add nearly 10 years to Dmitriev’s prison sentence. On February 16, 2021, a St. Petersburg cassation court allowed the 13-year prison sentence to stand.

Memorial believes the case against Dmitriev is political. In 1997, the historian uncovered a mass grave made during the Stalinist terror in Karelia’s Sandarmokh forest massif. Dmitriev has also worked to compile memorial lists of local residents who were victims of Soviet era repression.

According to Proekt, the cases against Dmitriev could be linked to a list of NKVD officers that Memorial published in 2016. The list included the name of one Vasily Mikhailovich Seryshev, who was involved in Stalinist repressions and later arrested for “participating in massive unjustified arrests” (notably, he was never rehabilitated). Proekt’s journalists suggest that Vasily Seryshev could have been a relative of Putin’s aide Anatoly Seryshev — the former head of the Karelian FSB.