The 225 donor cases. Russian authorities continue to prosecute donors to Navalny’s Anti‑Corruption Foundation across the country

By the spring of 2026, at least 225 criminal cases had been opened in Russia on charges of “financing extremism” (Article 282.3 of the Russian Criminal Code) over donations made to the ACF after the foundation was banned in the summer of 2021. Mediazona established this figure from press releases issued by law enforcement agencies, court records and statements from the defendants themselves.

We have documented such cases in 64 Russian regions, from Kaliningrad in the West to Sakhalin in the Far East. The highest number is in Moscow (25 cases), followed by Sverdlovsk region (17) and Kaliningrad region (13).

Of the 225 cases known to us, 187 have been filed in court. There are a total of 190 court cases related to ACF donations, but three of them do not involve ordinary donors: the prosecutions of Leonid Volkov, Alexei Navalny, “Navalny Live” staff member Daniel Kholodny, and the foundation’s investigator Sergei Ezhov. We include these in the chart of cases filed in court, but not in the overall statistics.

Last year set a record for the number of ACF donor cases in the courts. In 2022 there were only two such cases; four in 2023; and 27 in 2024. In 2025 we recorded 131 criminal cases. In the first months of 2026 we have found a further 23, and it is already clear the total by year’s end will be considerably higher.

Our tally includes only those cases in which we could reliably confirm that the defendant was being tried for transfers to the ACF rather than to another “extremist organisation”—religious groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the vaguely-defined gang-culture movement “A.U.E.”, and others. 

It is often only possible to determine exactly where a defendant sent money several months after the verdict. This means 225 cases is a conservative estimate, since the courts are reluctant to share information about ongoing trials.

For this reason, in the majority of “financing of extremism” case filed in courts in 2026, it is not yet possible to establish to whom the defendant transferred money. The rise in the number of unidentified Article 282.3 cases in the courts coincides with the rise in ACF cases, suggesting that a significant share of them do in fact concern the ACF, even if we cannot yet confirm this.

To date, we are aware of 167 convictions linked to the ACF’s fundraising. As before, judges typically impose non-custodial sentences: more than 85% of defendants have avoided prison.

Fines are the most common punishment, handed down to 114 people. By Mediazona’s calculations, the total value of those fines has reached nearly 40 million roubles (about $527,000), while the donations that triggered the prosecutions amount to roughly 400,000 roubles (about $5,270).

One of the cases that ended in a fine is particularly notable because, for the first time, the text of the verdict revealed how law enforcement and Rosfinmonitoring, Russia’s financial intelligence watchdog, track down ACF donors.

In December 2025, the Petrogradsky District Court of St. Petersburg fined businessman Grigory Kunis 350,000 roubles ($4,640) for donations to the ACF. The agencies involved in the case were the FSB and Rosfinmonitoring, which has access to all bank transactions in Russia. A deputy head of the financial investigations department of Rosfinmonitoring’s North-West Federal District office testified for the trial. He first mentioned an FSB request regarding Kunis personally, then explained that after the ACF was designated an “extremist organisation”, Rosfinmonitoring and law enforcement had jointly carried out a financial investigation into the merchant account with the identifier V2NI29SJROMGYKY in order to identify those who had transferred money to it.

The account with merchant ID V2NI29SJROMGYKY is cited in almost every donor case apart from the earliest ones: it is through this identifier that investigators prove the defendant sent money to Navalny’s foundation.

This witness testimony proves that search for ACF donors is being run centrally, with Rosfinmonitoring working alongside the security services. You can read more about the investigation into the donation cases in Mediazona’s first article on the topic:

Of the cases Mediazona has been able to review, 24 defendants received suspended sentences. A further five were sentenced to compulsory labour.

Another 24 defendants received prison sentences (four of them in absentia). The charge of “financing extremism” carries a maximum of eight years’ imprisonment, but the courts have yet to reach the upper limit where that was the sole charge.

Half of the custodial sentences have been handed down in Moscow. ACF donors in the capital have until now been punished significantly more harshly than those in the regions—but in recent months, Moscow judges have started behaving less predictably.

On a single day, March 2, the Timiryazevsky Court fined an IT entrepreneur for donating to the ACF while the Meshchansky Court sentenced Alexei Buchnev, a former Central Bank employee, to three years in prison. The following day, the Butyrsky Court sentenced one of Buchnev’s colleagues to compulsory labour. Two weeks later, on March 16, the Savelovsky Court fined Dmitry Nyudlchiev, an employee of a Rosatom subsidiary. The next day, the IT specialist Alexei Yekaterinin was sentenced to four years in prison by the Perovsky Court.

Why the courts hand down such wildly different punishments is unclear. It does not depend on the size of the donations: for transfers of the same 2,100 roubles (about $28) in total, one Moscow resident received a fine and another a prison sentence. Some defendants donate to Russia’s Ukraine war effort in the hope that it will be treated as a mitigating factor—but this is no guarantee of freedom. Yekaterinin, who was sent to prison, had transferred more than 10,000 roubles (around $130) to the “People’s Front. All for Victory” fund. The same goes for renouncing one’s previous views. Yekaterinin pleaded guilty, and his lawyer argued in court that the ACF had “set him up” by “playing on” citizens’ patriotic sentiments.

A lawyer who handles ACF donor cases told Mediazona that, in his experience, sentencing is shaped by a host of factors, including “the personal impression the defendant and the defence make on a particular judge”.

Outside Moscow, custodial sentences have become more common in Kaliningrad region, though punishments there remain lighter than in the capital. In October 2025, defendants named Feshchenkov and Kovalenko were each sentenced to six months imprisonment. In December, a local resident named Kazanovsky received four months. In February 2026, another Kaliningrad resident was sentenced to three years. In total, at least five people in the region have been given custodial sentences, including Pavel Natsarenus, who was jailed for eight months in 2024.

Besides Moscow and Kaliningrad region, custodial sentences for ACF donations have also recently been handed down in Kirov region and Stavropol krai. In November, a court in Kirov sentenced an IT entrepreneur, who had left Russia back in September 2022, to three years in absentia. Konstantin Bernatov, a resident of Stavropol, received the same sentence in January, this time in person. The details of his case are not known.

The folklorist Valery Ledkov from Khanty-Mansiysk, whom we mentioned in our previous update, has since been released. In February, the Seventh Court of Cassation commuted his custodial sentence to a suspended one.

We deal separately with cases in which the defendant is charged with something else in addition to ACF donations—an additional charge can substantially affect the sentence. Lawyers warn that once the security services have taken an interest in someone because of their support for the foundation, they may well find other grounds for prosecution.

Igor Meshalnikov, a resident of Kostroma region, was first fined 40,000 roubles (around $530) for donating to the ACF and then, several months later, detained on a fresh charge of financing Artpodgotovka. He was ultimately sentenced to 10 years.

Alexander Germizin, secretary of the Vladimir branch of the liberal opposition party Rassvet, was first convicted of “justifying terrorism”. A second case was then opened against him over cryptocurrency transfers to the ACF and the Armed Forces of Ukraine made after the start of the war (“financing extremism” and “treason”). The security services had likely gained access to Germizin’s devices during the first case and found the prohibited payments there. He was sentenced to 15 years.

A similar sentence—14 years—was imposed on a resident of Primorsky krai in the Far East who had made transfers to the ACF and the AFU “totalling more than 13,000 roubles” (around $170). Exactly how he moved the money is unclear.

There are also the opposite cases, in which someone is first detained on charges unrelated to supporting the opposition. This is what happened to Viktor Mezhuiev from Sakhalin region. In 2025 he and his friends were first convicted of illegal fishing, and a few months later he was sentenced on charges of “financing extremism”. He was fined 300,000 roubles (around $4,000).

Editor: Maxim Litavrin