Arseny Turbin is spending his 18th birthday in a single-prisoner cell in pretrial detention center number 5 in Perm, 1,165 kilometers east of Moscow.
He was transferred there in February as new charges were prepared against him, the latest chapter in a story that highlights the plight of child political prisoners in Russia.
Turbin was 15 years old when he was arrested in 2023 after distributing flyers criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, sharing posts by opposition politicians, and expressing opposition to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
At that moment, he was described as the youngest political prisoner in Russia.
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Russia Sentences Traveler To 16 Years For Treason Over $250 Transfer To A Ukrainian“The defense lawyer told his mother: Irina, don’t worry,” a friend told RFE/RL’s Russian Service. “He was a 14-year-old child who made a protest…will they see him as a threat?”
The friend, like others quoted in this article, is not being named for safety reasons. RFE/RL is designated an undesirable organization in Russia, putting anyone who speaks to it in potential danger.
Youth Behind Bars
Turbin was given a 5-year term behind bars after being convicted of membership of a terrorist organization in June 2024.
The organization in question, the Free Russia Legion, is an exile Russian armed group that has fought alongside Ukrainian forces. Turbin had written an e-mail to them saying he was “ready to stick up posters and fight Putin’s propaganda” but prosecutors claimed he had planned to travel to Ukraine and carry out sabotage against military targets.
Arseniy Turbin at the grave of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny
Turbin denies this. While admitting he had put flyers criticizing Putin into neighbors’ mailboxes, he said he did not do this on anyone’s instructions. The family said that investigators added a paragraph containing a confession of working for the legion to a protocol he signed.
“[Prosecutors] told them openly that it was enough that Arseny was against Putin and against the special military operation,” a family friend said, referring to the term used by the Kremlin for the full-scale invasion it launched against Ukraine in 2022.
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'Civil Death': The Kremlin Is Building A Legal Purgatory For Exiled RussiansTurbin had also shared posts by Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who died in prison in 2024, and visited his grave in Moscow.
Following the guilty verdict and sentencing, Turbin was sent to a correctional facility in Perm. Family friends told RFE/RL that there were immediate efforts to compromise him further.
At first, other inmates would seek to involve him in conversations where he might incriminate himself, supporters said. Then, a notebook with comments supporting a banned youth group was planted in his bedside table.
Turbin’s lawyers provided evidence he had nothing to do with it. They and family friends also stated that Turbin was bullied and provoked by teachers who taught children held in the correctional facility.
New Charges
This year, things got more serious.
On January 7, a riot broke out at the correctional facility. Turbin was subsequently charged with taking part. The new charges could lead to a further custodial sentence of 3-8 years.
Turbin told his family he had stayed in his cell watching TV. They believe the case is “revenge” for the fact that he has always denied the original charges against him.
A family member told RFE/RL that an officer in the Federal Security Service (FSB) once told Turbin's mother “we won’t release your child…we’ll think up another case.”
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Human Rights In Russia In 'Seismic Decline' Amid War On Ukraine, UN Expert SaysYevgeny Smirnov, a layer with legal aid organization First Department, said the authorities often brought extra charges “to break” inmates.
“Repeat prosecutions are no longer a rarity. Most often, they are brought against those who resist the system and draw attention to themselves. It seems that this is how the authorities are trying to intimidate society even more,” he said.
Friends said Turbin’s family were bearing the situation as best they could.
Turbin was born in Dubai but his mother, Irina, subsequently left his father and returned to her parents in Livny, 360 kilometers south of Moscow. She worked for 13 years as a lead contract manager handling government procurement at a state-funded institution.
In June she lost her job and been unable to pass security checks when seeking new employment.
Turbin’s grandparents’ small pensions are the only income and need to cover extra expenses such as legal fees and long journeys to visit him in Perm.
“His grandmother said: ‘I have to see him. Who knows what will happen?’ They are destroying the whole family,” a family friend said.
Not An Isolated Case
While Turbin was reportedly Russia’s youngest political prisoner at the time of his arrest, his case is not unique.
A report by the banned human rights group Memorial in June this year documented “427 cases of politically motivated criminal prosecution of minors,” adding that “299 people under the age of 18 were deprived of their liberty. Right now, 107 children are in detention.”
Memorial said that the real numbers could be much higher and that there had been a sharp increase in cases in which extra charges were brought against jailed minors at a later date.
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Russian Court Rejects Anti-War Party's Appeal Over Election BanThe report also stated that cases of graffiti, distributing flyers, anti-war posts on social media, attempts to damage railway equipment, or alleged involvement in banned organizations were repeatedly qualified as terrorist acts.
“Criminal cases have become a tool for intimidating young people as a warning to others,” it said.
Examples of this include three boys arrested at age 14: Nikita Udarov, who was given a 5-year sentence after allegedly creating an FSB headquarters on the video game Minecraft and planning to blow it up; Valery Zaitsev, given a 4 1/2-year sentence for allegedly planning a terrorist attack; and Artyom Doronin, given a 4-year sentence on terrorism charges after allegedly trying to set fire to a filing cabinet at a train station.
Memorial condemned Doronin’s case as “an example of the arbitrary application of the law on terrorist acts. It turned out to be the only legal tool that allowed investigators to open a criminal case: individuals under the age of 16 are not subject to criminal liability for property damage committed out of hooliganism or for acts of sabotage.”
Turbin’s family are now said to be particularly concerned about where he will be sent to serve the rest of his sentence after turning 18 on August 19 and becoming an adult. There is no official word on this, but the family are concerned it will be even further away than Perm.
His lawyers are preparing appeals to both a higher court and to Putin himself, asking the case to be reconsidered.