From unionist to FSB provocateur. A Mediazona investigation uncovers the man tied to both local activist’s and Evan Gershkovich’s trial

On March 29, 2023, the Urals publication Vecherniye Vedomosti reported on a strange detention outside the Bukowski Grill restaurant in central Yekaterinburg. An eyewitness told journalists they had seen men in plain clothes leading someone to a minivan, having pulled a sweater over his head to hide his face from passersby. The detained man was Evan Gershkovich.

Local public relations specialist Yaroslav Shirshikov, who was later jailed for a post about the killing of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, noted at the time that they had previously dined there, suggesting the journalist was apprehended while returning to the same spot. “It’s not hard to guess that in an unfamiliar city, a person will go to familiar places, right?” Shirshikov wrote.

This is how Gershkovich, who had worked in Russia for many years, came to be accused of “espionage”. The FSB and the Prosecutor General’s Office claimed that he was acting “on instructions from the CIA” and employing “strict measures of conspiracy” to gather information about the operations of Uralvagonzavod, a defence enterprise manufacturing and repairing military equipment.

Shortly before his arrest, Gershkovich had travelled to Nizhny Tagil, home of the Uralvagonzavod plant, where he met with local politician Vyacheslav Vegner. According to Vegner, the reporter asked about public opinion on the Wagner PMC mercenary group and the performance of defence plants.

“He came to interview various people, patriots as they call us. He was interested in questions related to public support during the ‘special military operation’,” Vegner said, using the Kremlin’s official term for its invasion of Ukraine. “The activities of the Wagner PMC also interested him; he asked why I corresponded with Prigozhin. And he asked about industrial enterprises, how they are reorienting as part of the SMO. I told him that they’re doing great and there are no staff shortages.” Vegner recalled their meeting boastfully, mentioning a bottle of cognac: “You can write it just like that: ‘Vegner drinks cognac with an American spy’.”

After more than a year in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo pre-trial detention centre, Gershkovich was transferred to Yekaterinburg, convicted in a swift, three-hearing trial and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

The Unknown Informant

Just two weeks later, Evan Gershkovich was freed as part of a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries. Soon after, RT, the official propaganda channel, published edited videos of his arrest at Bukowski Grill, “a special for Western sceptics”. 

One clip included a secretly recorded audio conversation between Gershkovich and an unidentified man whose voice was digitally altered. 

“So, what’s the best way to do this?” the journalist asks.

“I’ve done everything you asked for. I have with me…” the other person replies.

“Uh-huh.”

“The only thing I ask is: please, be very careful, because this specifically is classified information.”

“We won’t even write that we saw the documents,” the journalist says. “We’ll just have an anonymous source. So neither we are suspected of gathering it, nor is anyone suspected of handing it over. Ours will say something like: ‘Anonymous sources said’.”

After a cut in the footage, Gershkovich says: “No, there won’t be any mention of that at all. We approach this, which is why I said to leave it at home, the approach is, like, this is just an interview.”

The audio ends there. The video then switches to footage of the arrest. A man in civilian clothes grabs Gershkovich by the neck and pulls him from the table. He is handcuffed, laid face down on the floor, and then led out of the restaurant with a sweater wrapped around his head.

The second video, nearly two minutes long and set to music, shows Gershkovich sitting at a corner table. A man in a dark, striped pullover, his face blurred, joins him. They talk as Gershkovich looks through his notebooks.

The angle then changes, and a group of at least six plainclothes officers is seen entering. They approach the table. Gershkovich’s companion stands up on his own, his face still concealed. An officer jumps onto the sofa, grabs the journalist by the neck, and drags him from the table.

The footage shows the journalist’s companion is treated more gently; an officer places his hands behind his back as if to handcuff him, but it is unclear if this actually happens. What became of this man is not shown.

“To be returned to Sergienya”

Evan Gershkovich’s entire trial in Sverdlovsk Regional Court was held in secret, but on the day of the verdict, a video of the judge reading the sentence was published by the media. In it, Mediazona noticed a fleeting mention of a man named Sergienya. As Judge Andrei Mineev listed what was to be done with the physical evidence, he said: “The Alcatel mobile phone with SIM cards from the Motiv and Beeline mobile carriers is to be returned to Sergienya or his authorised representative.”

Mediazona has identified this man as Pavel Sergienya, a 42-year-old employee of Uralvagonzavod and a representative of “Solidarity”, the independent trade union. He is a prominent local figure who has repeatedly criticised the plant’s management, including in interviews with independent Russian and international media.

In 2016, he told Uralinformburo, a local news agency, how management was cutting wages. He later gave a comment for an article in Novaya Gazeta, then one of Russia’s leading independent newspapers, about the reduction of benefits for occupational diseases. Two years later, Sergienya told the BBC Russian Service that the plant was unprofitable and “simply won’t survive” without subsidies. In 2020, he told Radio Svoboda, the Russian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, that the plant was mired in debt.

In the summer of 2023, three months after Gershkovich’s arrest, Sergienya gave an interview to Novaya Gazeta Europe, the original paper’s spin-off based outside Russia, about an incident at Uralvagonzavod where a worker stabbed himself in the neck after his salary was drastically cut. It is not surprising that such a source might attract the attention of a foreign journalist.

Evan Gershkovich, whom Mediazona contacted for comment after his release, did not answer our questions.

We tried to contact Sergienya himself back in July of last year. One Mediazona reporter was told by Sergienya’s colleague that he did not wish to speak; Sergienya himself, when asked by another reporter for a contact on Telegram or Signal, sent an address with Mail.ru, a Russian email provider, and then broke off communication.

His full role in the Gershkovich case remained unclear until his name surfaced again this spring.

FSB Agent

Sergienya reappeared this spring as the key figure in the case against Andrei Vogel, a 65-year-old opposition activist from Nizhny Tagil accused of trying to create a terrorist group to attack the management of Uralvagonzavod and government officials. Vogel claimed he fell victim to a provocation and named Sergienya.

Vogel was arrested in a sting operation on the night of January 31, 2024, when Gershkovich had already spent nearly a year in detention. Sergienya and a National Guard soldier visited the pensioner’s apartment to report on a supposedly successful “act of intimidation”: the firebombing of a car belonging to a Uralvagonzavod director. They showed Vogel a video of a burning vehicle, which, it was later revealed, was a random clip downloaded from the internet and supplied by an FSB officer.

Moments after the two men left, leaving a black bag in the hallway, Vogel’s doorbell rang again. Expecting his visitors to have returned for the bag, he opened the door to find himself facing a masked man pointing a gun at him. During the ensuing raid, security forces “discovered” the bag, which contained Molotov cocktails.

His trial, unlike Gershkovich’s, was held in open court, and more became known about Sergienya. During his interrogation, he stated that he still works as a heat treatment specialist at Uralvagonzavod, though in previous interviews he had identified as a former employee. He is divorced with two children and has three prior criminal convictions, including for robbery as a teenager and for non-payment of alimony.

For Vogel, the realisation of his old acquaintance’s betrayal came at the moment of his arrest. “It was a shock for me. The moment the special forces pushed my face into the floor, I understood the setup,” he told the court. “I was truly shaken by the man’s baseness. He constantly provoked me into some kind of activity, all while recording everything and preparing such a trap.”

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Although Sergienya spoke readily with journalists, he has no public social media pages; Mediazona found only a sparsely used account on VK under a false name. He did not travel to Yekaterinburg for Vogel’s trial but was questioned via video link, as was likely the case in Gershkovich’s trial.

A 14-minute video from 2016 still exists on YouTube in which Sergienya discusses violations at Uralvagonzavod as a representative of “Solidarity”. Facial recognition software showed an almost perfect match between a screenshot from the video and a photograph of Sergienya from his ex-wife’s social media page.

We cannot state with absolute certainty that the person with Gershkovich on the day of his arrest was Sergienya. His face is hidden in the FSB footage, but details visible for brief moments, such as the shape of his head, ear, and hairline, do resemble Sergienya from the 2016 video.

Mediazona has not yet found any other cases involving him. It is unclear when he began cooperating with the FSB or what specific role he was assigned in the Gershkovich case. But the story of 65-year-old Andrei Vogel shows that careless contact with Pavel Sergienya can lead to criminal charges.

Editors: Sergei Golubev, Dmitry Tkachev