Rosmolodezh is suing the winners of its grant competitions and demanding the money back. Over the past three years, there have been hundreds of cases. "Groza" talked to those who found themselves in this situation and counted how many cases Rosmolodezh won in court

Every year Rosmolodezh holds grant competitions. Money is given out for a variety of projects - from volunteer and educational initiatives to festivals, media projects and “patriotic” events. The winners of the competitions receive money from the state budget and are required to report how they spent it and what exactly they did. If the agency believes that the terms of the grant have been violated - for example, the project was not implemented or the report was not submitted - it may demand the return of the money. If the grant recipient does not return them voluntarily, Rosmolodezh goes to court.

From 2023 to 2026, Moscow courts received 450 lawsuits from Rosmolodezh - the agency is suing the winners of grant competitions. Rosmolodezh states that the winners of the competitions did not submit reports and demands a refund.

At the same time, the grant recipients with whom Groza spoke claim that they sent reports on their projects, and learned about the department’s claims only several years later. "Groza" talked to competition participants and studied data from Moscow courts.

We changed the names of the characters at their request.

“You don’t need to be a lawyer to read and understand that they are just trying to rip money off you.” Rosmolodezh demands money for projects that were implemented back in 2019

“It was 2019 that became the starting point from which grants are now withdrawn and the trial begins. <...> I became a person from 2019,” says Yulia. In 2019, she won a grant from Rosmolodezh for the event, which she had been conducting with the team for several years.

Which?

“Groza” knows the details and goals of the event, but we do not present them here for reasons of Yulia’s safety.

The event was first organized back in 2017. At first it was carried out at the regional level, then expanded to the districts - participants from other regions began to come to the project. After this, Yulia’s team decided to apply for a grant from Rosmolodezh.

“We were given a grant, and we held a cool district event, which was attended by very, very many children from other cities and regions. The event was really cool, a bunch of news was published about it on different websites <...> The guys came back with a wealth of knowledge,” says Yulia about the project.

Another student Olga received a grant from Rosmolodezh in 2023. The girl was studying at the university at that time and did not have the financial opportunity to implement her project - so she decided to contact Rosmolodezh.

While working on the project, Olga was constantly in touch with the curator of Rosmolodezh - she called, emailed and asked him questions. She also asked about documents and reporting.

Olga had to submit a report on the project in the fall of 2024. Olga uploaded it to the FGAIS “Youth of Russia” platform back in the summer - two months before the deadline. She took screenshots with the dates of downloading the materials and separately informed the curator and representatives of Rosmolodezh that the reports had been sent.

Federal State Automated Information System “Youth of Russia” State online platform of Rosmolodezh. Through it, participants submit applications for grants, forums and events, and grant recipients submit reports on projects.

“When I called the curator a few days after I uploaded the reports, he told me that everything was okay: I see your report, it’s in your personal account, wait, they will accept it,” Olga recalls.

According to Yulia, she submitted the reports for her project on time, back in 2020. The system for submitting reports was different then - only in 2021 it became possible to upload reports through the FGAIS “Youth of Russia” platform. Yulia says that she sent all the documents by email.

“The report was prepared - it was a huge, heavy document, which contained not only text - it was stuffed with hyperlinks to various work things that also had to be provided so that the amount of work was visible. And also a cloud file storage that contained checks, contracts - everything where the money went. And all this was sent in large numbers by mail. The letter was sent,” says Yulia.

But four years after the event, the girl received a letter from the regional center for supporting youth initiatives - Yulia was asked to return the grant in full. At the end of the letter there was a footnote - if you have any questions, please contact the Rosmolodezh Youth Resource Center directly.

What Rosmolodezh is going to court with: deficiencies in reports or their submission “at the wrong time”

Yulia wrote to Rosmolodezh and re-attached the submitted report. From correspondence with representatives of the agency, Yulia learned that, according to Rosmolodezh, in the fall of 2020 she was sent a complaint that the girl had not submitted a report, and in the spring of 2022 - a demand to return the grant. Yulia herself says that she did not receive these documents.

Rosmolodezh refused to review the report again, explaining that doing so outside the reporting period is prohibited by internal regulations. According to the girl, in a telephone conversation with Yulia, an employee of Rosmolodezh made it clear that there were two options left: either return the grant voluntarily, or the dispute would be resolved in court.

“I asked to show me at least the document that they told me about. I have never seen this demand [for the return of the grant]. And after that, a letter appeared in my mail with the words: “Hello, as a continuation of the conversation, I am sending you a demand.” And there is a PDF of the requirement that was presented to me, with signatures and dates. Only this should have come to me physically by registered mail. After that, I realized that trial could not be avoided. I just lived for two years, constantly checking the website of the Basmanny Court,” recalls Yulia.

Did Rosmolodezh really have to send the demand by registered mail?

Not necessarily. In grant agreements of Rosmolodezh there are different methods of notification: “Electronic budget”, FGAIS “Youth of Russia”, e-mail and registered mail.

But the demand for the return of the grant is a legally significant message. It is there that the amount and return period are indicated, and from the moment of delivery the time for which the money must be returned usually begins to count. According to Article 165.1 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, a message can be considered delivered even if the person did not pick it up - if it arrived at his address, but was not delivered for reasons beyond his control.

In the summer of 2025, Yulia received a notification from Russian Post: a registered letter had been sent to her. That’s how she found out that Rosmolodezh had finally filed a lawsuit—six years after the project was implemented and two years after the first demand to return the money.

“For some reason, the statute of limitations is calculated not from the moment a person violates [the deadlines], but from the moment when Rosmolodezh recognized this violation, that is, sent some kind of document. Rosmolodezh can wait several years, then send demands to the person, and from that moment on the statute of limitations will be considered. That is, in fact, they control it [the statute of limitations]. And, unfortunately, this is how it works in the courts now,” explains Yulia.

Rosmolodezh did not contact Olga in any way for two years after the report was submitted - there were no pre-trial claims or demands. Olga learned that Rosmolodezh had gone to court when a summons from the Basmanny Court arrived at her registration address.

Then Olga thought that she really might have missed something.

“I immediately went [to look] at my reports, because after two years, what kind of memory is there anyway? I saved all of them [the documents and reports], I have them all in my hands. I started going through all the receipts, checking everything, all the contracts, everything we have. And I realized - everything is okay, I have everything in my hands,” Olga recalls.

According to Olga, at first Rosmolodezh claimed that the girl had not submitted a report at all. Later, the department’s position changed - Rosmolodezh employees began to say that the report was uploaded at the wrong time; then - that it lacked a report on the achievement of target indicators; and then about comments on individual documents.

“[Rosmolodezh] has absolutely illogical arguments. You don’t need to be a lawyer to read and understand that they are just trying to rip money off you,” says Olga.

However, Olga agreed with one of the comments - according to her, there was indeed a formal flaw in one of the contracts. According to Olga, this mistake could have been corrected in one day if Rosmolodezh had reported it at the stage of checking the report, and not two years later in court.

We do not indicate in the text what flaw we are talking about because of the heroine’s safety.

450 claims in three and a half years. What is known from judicial statistics on claims of Rosmolodezh

Olga and Yulia are not the only ones who are faced with Rosmolodezh’s demand to return grant money. For example, in the Oryol region in 2025, Rosmolodezh sued the winner of the grant competition, Anna Bakaeva, for almost a million rubles. Rosmolodezh claimed that the girl did not provide a report on her project “A World Without Borders.”

In the Sverdlovsk region in 2025, Rosmolodezh tried to recover a million rubles from the regional ministry of education official Nikita Beltyukov. The agency claimed that he reported late for the grant received at the end of 2020: the report was due in January 2022. The court, however, refused to satisfy the claim of Rosmolodezh, since the activities for the project were carried out, which means there was no reason to return the money.

"Groza" studied the data of Moscow courts. According to these data, from 2018 to 2022, Rosmolodezh never acted as a plaintiff in Moscow courts. However, starting in 2023, the Federal Youth Agency began filing lawsuits.

In 2023, Rosmolodezh acted as a plaintiff in courts at least 15 times, in 2024 - 121 times, in 2025 - 155, and in the first half of 2026 - 159 times.

What did we think?

We counted by the number of cases in the first instance.

In just three and a half years, Rosmolodezh filed 450 claims. Of these , at least 298 cases are legal proceedings with the winners of grant competitions.

In 298 cases there are published court decisions - it is indicated there that the cases relate to grant competitions. In other cases, there are no such documents.

Not all lawsuits indicate how much Rosmolodezh requires to return from the winners of grant competitions, but usually we are talking about hundreds of thousands of rubles. For example, in one of the cases, Rosmolodezh demanded to recover 700,000 rubles from the grant recipient. In another one - 1,269,000 ₽.

Most often, the court sides with Rosmolodezh - from 2023 to 2026, in 321 cases out of 450 claims were satisfied. Only in 29 cases did the defendants manage to defend their case - while some of the trials are still ongoing, and decisions on them may change in appeal or cassation . In 29 cases, Rosmolodezh abandoned the claim; in at least eight cases, the defendants themselves voluntarily returned the money to Rosmolodezh. In another case, Rosmolodezh accepted a grant report from the defendant.

Appeal is the stage of the trial in which a higher court reviews the decision of the first instance. He can keep it in force, change it or cancel it.

Cassation is the next stage of appeal after appeal. The Court of Cassation usually does not re-examine a case on the facts, but checks whether there were significant violations of the law in previous decisions.

At the same time, Rosmolodezh itself claims that they try not to let the mistakes of grant recipients lead to serious consequences. The head of the agency, Grigory Gurov, commented on the situation with allegedly “incorrect” reports at SPIEF.

“We have guys who report poorly or incorrectly for the conduct of their events, grants, and implementation of projects. And for us this is a significant challenge, because our task is to make sure that everything is positive, so that every young person has the right to make a mistake, but this mistake does not lead to any serious consequences, especially related to finances,” Gurov said in an interview with TASS.

Gurov also said that Rosmolodezh is developing a system of support for grant recipients: according to him, the agency gradually checks the implementation of grants and reminds participants if it sees that “something is not working.”

“Groza” sent a request to Rosmolodezh with a request to explain why the agency began to massively demand that grant recipients return the allocated funds. On June 23, Groza was contacted by a girl who introduced herself as an employee of the press service of Rosmolodezh.Grants. She promised that the press service would respond to the editor’s request by June 24. However, at the time of publication, Rosmolodezh had not responded to the request.

Court proceedings with Rosmolodezh may last for several years

Some proceedings last for years. So, in 2024, Rosmolodezh began suing the winner of the All-Russian competition of youth projects, Anastasia Matyushkina. Back in 2019, she received a grant for the Activator project. There are references to this project on social networks and on the websites of institutions in the Tula region: it took place in Plavsk and Cherni . Judging by these publications, Activator held meetings with active youth and workshops on social design.

According to the agreement, Matyushkina had to implement the project by November 30, 2019, and then, by July 14, 2020, provide Rosmolodezh with reporting on expenses, achievement of project indicators, implementation of the schedule and publications in the media.

In court, Rosmolodezh argued that Matyushkina did not provide such reports within the prescribed period. In December 2020, the agency sent her a claim demanding that she submit a report, and in April 2022, a demand to return the money. In July 2024, Rosmolodezh filed a claim to recover the grant.

At first, the Basmanny Court of Moscow refused the agency. The court decided that Rosmolodezh missed the statute of limitations: the agency should have learned about the violation already on July 15, 2020 - the day after the deadline for submitting the report. The appeal upheld this decision.

But the cassation court decided that the statute of limitations had not expired, and overturned the decision of the first and appellate instances and sent the case for a new trial. After this, the Basmanny Court reconsidered the case - and already satisfied the agency's claim.

During the re-examination, the court indicated that Matyushkina did not provide the reporting documents on time and “in proper form,” and also did not prove that the grant was used precisely for the purposes specified in the agreement. The court separately noted that the report appeared after the filing of the claim, but no documents were attached to it confirming the expenditure of funds. The last meeting, which is reflected in the case file, took place in February 2026.

But sometimes students win cases with Rosmolodezh

Another lawsuit that Rosmolodezh filed against the winner of a grant competition shows how grant recipients manage to defend themselves in court.

In 2021, Akhmetova received a grant for the All-Russian festival of modern poetry “Slam”. Later, Rosmolodezh demanded that the money be returned to the budget, again allegedly because the girl did not provide reports. Akhmetova filed a counterclaim in response - she asked the court to oblige Rosmolodezh to accept her report.

The court sided with the defendant Regina Akhmetova: in the trial court and on appeal, the court refused to collect the grant from Rosmolodezh and ordered the agency to accept the grantee’s report. However, Rosmolodezh filed a cassation appeal, so the dispute continues.

In court, Akhmetova argued that the violation was formal, and the project itself was implemented. She provided reporting documents, confirmed the implementation of five events, the targeted expenditure of funds and the achievement of grant indicators. In addition, the defendant brought an opinion from an audit company specialist on the achievement of the grant’s goals. The court separately noted that Rosmolodezh did not claim misuse of funds and did not refute the specialist’s conclusions.

Audit company

An independent organization that reviews the financial statements, records, and expenses of a company or project.

Akhmetova was indeed late in submitting the report, but explained this by her health condition - during the preparation of the report, she was under the supervision of a psychiatrist due to an anxiety-depressive disorder. She warned Rosmolodezh about this. The court found these circumstances to be valid. The Basmanny District Court of Moscow refused to collect the grant from Rosmolodezh, and the Moscow City Court left this decision unchanged. Now the agency is trying to challenge these decisions in cassation.

“It makes you really think about whether it’s worth taking grants from the state.” What are the ways to avoid legal disputes with Rosmolodezh?

After Olga received a subpoena, she contacted a lawyer. The girl lives far from Moscow and cannot regularly travel to meetings at the Basmanny Court. In addition, Olga understood that she did not understand either accounting or jurisprudence.

“I did not receive this grant as a lawyer or accountant. Therefore, I realized that if they decided to find fault based on criteria that are known only to them, then I could not do without professionals,” explains Olga.

Julia also turned to a lawyer. По ее словам, вместе с юристом они восстановили всю хронологию: когда был реализован проект, когда отправили отчет, когда Росмолодежь впервые заявила о претензиях. При этом, говорит Юлия, универсальной стратегии для всех таких дел нет: несмотря на общую проблему, каждый случай нужно разбирать отдельно.

«Линия защиты может строиться по нескольким траекториям. Допустим, в моём случае — это сроки давности, которые при любом раскладе, как ни крути, прошли. Еще можно обратиться к отсутствию здравого смысла. Когда человек реализует проект с помощью выделенных средств, а потом из-за того, что якобы не вовремя сдан отчет, ему говорят вернуть все деньги, потому что мероприятие не проводили. Как это не проводили, если в открытой сети интернет есть множество доказательств того, что его проводили», — говорит Юлия.

Обе девушки продолжают судиться с Росмолодежью. «Гроза» проверила карточки героинь на сайте Мосгорсуда — их дела действительно находятся в процессе.

До иска Росмолодежи Ольга думала — чтобы избежать проблем достаточно просто быть внимательным и хранить у себя все документы: чеки, договоры, скриншоты личного кабинета и переписку с кураторами. Но теперь она не уверена, что даже такая аккуратность может защитить от претензий.

«У меня спустя два года вся документация на руках, у меня есть даже записи платформы, которые подтверждают, что Росмолодежь обновляла платформу за эти два года. <...> И даже при всем этом суд все равно идет, он не заканчивается на первых заседаниях, и конца и края этому не видно. Спасет ли грантополучателя скрупулезность в документах, в их сохранении, фиксации, я не уверена. Скорее всего, [спасет] только юрист. И это на самом деле сейчас заставляет очень сильно задуматься, стоит ли брать гранты от государства», — говорит Ольга.

Юлия тоже приложила к своему делу все имеющиеся скриншоты, переписки и документы. Однако ее судебное разбирательство с Росмолодежью все еще продолжается.

«Сначала я была просто в шоке, а потом это переросло в возмущение, потому что мой проект был отправной точкой. Уже несколько лет этот проект [мероприятие] проводится ежегодно, на всероссийском уровне. И ежегодно, конечно же, мероприятие проводится с помощью финансирования Росмолодежи. И как можно утверждать, что средства были присвоены, не потрачены, или проекта не было, если все прекрасно знают, что именно это было первым шажком к масштабированию проекта? Это просто не вяжется никакой логикой и никаким здравым смыслом», — делится своими эмоциями Юлия.

Юристы советуют грантополучателям заранее собирать доказательства. Например, в телеграм-канале «Справедливый юрист» советуют сохранять всю отчетную документацию — договоры, акты, чеки и другие подтверждения реализации проекта, соблюдение сроков отчетности, фиксацию факта направления отчета, ответы на замечания грантодателя и исправление недочетов.

Еще юристы советуют добровольно возвращать неиспользованный остаток гранта, если заявленные цели не достигнуты, а спорные суммы предлагать вернуть в досудебном порядке. Юристы отмечают, что суды смотрят не только на сам факт нарушения, но и на то, насколько оно серьезное, пытался ли получатель гранта добросовестно выполнить проект и кто в деле должен доказать нарушение. Полный возврат гранта называется крайней мерой — для случаев нецелевого использования средств или недостижения целей гранта.