Russian security forces taser student during raid on Voronezh urbanism conference

Security forces in Voronezh, in western Russia, tasered a student “five or six times” for refusing to unlock his phone during a raid at a local urbanism conference, independent news outlet SOTAvision reported on Sunday.

Kirill Derevsky, a 20-year-old student at a local technical college and member of the volunteer movement Not Politics, was tasered after officers from the Russian National Guard and the Centre for Combating Extremism, known as Centre E, raided the event around 30 minutes after it began.

According to the organisers, participants at the conference, titled “Talking about the City”, were to discuss topics such as “Is Voronezh a good city to live in?” and “What are the city's prospects for further development?”.

Derevsky and around 10 other participants were arrested and taken to a local police station, where they were held for several hours. Authorities said the conference was raided on the basis of an anonymous tip-off.

After they were taken into custody, no further physical force was used against the detainees, who were all released without charges.

Kirill Derevsky previously stood as an independent candidate for a local council in the Voronezh region in autumn 2025. In September, SOTAvision reported that he had faced pressure from the director of his technical college, who demanded that he withdraw from the election.

Police pressure on civil society organisations and grassroots activists in Russia has increased in recent years, even when they are not explicitly critical of the Kremlin. In April, a festival for local public initiatives in Tyumen was raided by masked security forces, who checked participants’ phones for anti-war posts and other “suspicious” messages.