A young man with schizophrenia abducted in Melitopol is to be “tried” for “espionage”

Leonid Popov, who was abducted in occupied Melitopol in April 2023, is being held in a pre-trial detention centre in Donetsk. The FSB opened a criminal case against the 24-year-old man, who was diagnosed with “undifferentiated schizophrenia” in 2018, for “espionage”, the Russian opposition media outlet Vazhnye Istorii reported, citing Alexei Ladukhin, a lawyer with the human rights organisation Every Human Being.

According to Vazhnye Istorii, Popov was abducted on the eve of his departure from Melitopol. In June, a man held in the same cell as Popov contacted his parents. According to him, the young man was kept in the basement of the commandant’s office in Melitopol, without water and food for two to three days, and beaten. According to the man, Popov was exhausted.

In July 2023, according to Vazhnye Istorii, Popov was taken to a hospital in Melitopol in a near-death state. He weighed only 40 kilograms – with a height of 195 cm – and had little idea what was happening to him. A neighbour in the ward helped him contact his parents.

After two weeks in the hospital, representatives of the Russian Investigative Committee called Popov’s father to inform him that they were releasing him home. But as soon as his father brought him home, he was taken away again.

The father filed a report of abduction with the Investigative Committee. In the autumn, human rights activists from Every Human Being received a response from the FSB that no investigative actions were being taken against Popov and he had not been detained. And in December 2023, the father was invited to the Investigative Committee, where he was shown a photo allegedly received from the FSB, in which Leonid holds a sheet reading “I am fine! I refuse to disclose my whereabouts.”

Neither the initiation of any legal proceedings against Popov nor his whereabouts were known until these days when human rights activists managed to receive a new response from the FSB. According to Vazhnye Istorii, legal proceedings against the young man were initiated in August 2024, almost a year and a half after his abduction.

The journalists noted that both FSB responses were signed by the same person, the first deputy head of the FSB department in the Zaporizhzhia region A.R. Dzhambulatov. Vazhnye Istorii found that a man with the same second name and initials worked as the deputy head of the FSB department in Chechnya until April 2023.

“They kidnapped a man, held him for a year without choosing a preventive measure, without granting him any status, without granting him the rights provided for a suspect, and still do not allow him to exercise them,” Ladukhin told the journalists. “He was not allowed to call his relatives, was not allowed to meet with a lawyer, receive parcels, etc. And a year later, he was named a suspect.”

In his opinion, there is no hope that Popov will be found not guilty. As Vazhnye Istorii noted, since 2022, there has been no acquittal of Ukrainian citizens in a Russian court. Human rights activists told journalists that the office of the Ukrainian Ombudsman is working to release the young man in exchange for Russian prisoners of war. Meanwhile, there is still no contact with Popov himself.