Youtube blogger Andrei Pyzh, sentenced to 5 years in a state secrets case, has been released

The host of the YouTube channel Urbanturizm, Andrei Pyzh, who has Russian and Ukrainian citizenship, was released from penal colony No. 5 in Metallostroy, Leningrad region, reports a Novaya correspondent. Pyzh spent more than four years in prison, receiving a sentence for collecting information constituting a state secret. His time in the colony was shortened by several months due to the time spent in the pre-trial detention center.

The blogger was met by friends and fans; in total, about 50 people gathered in the park near IK-5. Pyzh spoke about the conditions of detention in the colony. Also, according to him, FSIN employees asked “a lot of stupid questions,” for example, why did he need gloves in winter.

• The detention of the blogger, whose channel has almost 800 thousand subscribers, became known in early August 2020. Pyzh was detained when he entered a sensitive facility - the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant-2 in Sosnovy Bor. The next day, the blogger was charged and sent to Lefortovo.

• The investigation considered that in the period from December 2018 to August 2020, Pyzh illegally obtained information constituting a state secret about the features of several sensitive facilities in the Moscow region and photographing the metro infrastructure. The blogger himself claimed that he wanted to use the collected information for personal purposes for his blog.