Nikita Zhuravel has 13.5 years added to prison sentence for treason

A court in the southern Russian city of Volgograd has handed 20-year-old Nikita Zhuravel an additional 13.5 years in prison for treason, independent news outlet RusNews reported on Monday.

Zhuravel, who was already serving a 3.5-year prison sentence after being found guilty of “insulting the feelings of believers” and “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for posting a video of himself burning a Quran outside a mosque in Volgograd, had additional charges for treason pressed against him last month.

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, Zhuravel contacted a member of the Security Service of Ukraine via an online messenger and “offered his cooperation” before proceeding to send his contact videos of military aircraft, trains transporting military equipment, and the movement of military vehicles in March 2023.

Zhuravel, who is considered a political prisoner by Russian human rights group Memorial and a religious prisoner of conscience by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, made headlines last year for being savagely beaten while in pretrial detention in the Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya.

In September 2023, Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video of his then 15-year-old son Adam administering a beating to Zhuravel while in custody for insulting Islam, writing that he was proud of his son for his actions.

Adam Kadyrov, who faced no consequences for his actions after the police declined to open a criminal case against him over the attack, was later named a Hero of Chechnya and received multiple awards from other Muslim-majority regions in Russia.