Tax treason. A Russian‑born businessman, 60, flew to Russia to see his relatives; he is now charged with treason for paying his taxes in Ukraine

Oleg Varyukhin, who ran a small perfume business in Ukraine, was detained at a Moscow airport in early May after flying in from Chisinau, Moldova, to visit relatives. On July 22, the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow ordered him held in custody. Today, the Moscow City Court left that order in place.

The alleged act of “treason”, according to his defence attorney, is the tax he paid on the income from his business in Ukraine.

Varyukhin was born in Norilsk, in Russia’s Arctic, according to data from leaked Russian databases. He moved to Ukraine in 1999 and lived there ever since, his lawyer, Yuri Shel, told Mediazona. Shel says his client holds neither a Russian nor a Ukrainian passport, only a Soviet-era internal passport, last issued to him in 1981—a full decade before the Soviet Union crumbled. Leaked records indicate Ukrainian authorities issued him a domestic identity document in 2014.

Shel described his client as a retired pilot living on a pension, and put it bluntly: “He is the last citizen of USSR, write it this way”.

Because he had no international travel passport either, Varyukhin planned to enter Russia on a temporary travel document issued by the Russian embassy in Chisinau, his lawyer said. He was detained at the airport on arrival.

The treason charge was preceded by a series of “carousel” arrests, a common practice in which policemen would file a series of minor administrative charges to keep someone locked up while a criminal charge is deliberated and paperwork is prepared.

Between May and July 2026, Varyukhin was jailed four times for “petty hooliganism”. The first arrest came on May 4, when officers said they picked him up at a sports ground for swearing in public. He was detained again on May 19, the day he walked free, with police claiming this time that he had also tried to run from them. Two more detentions followed, on June 18 and July 5. On each occasion a Moscow court sentenced him to 15 days’ administrative arrest.

Shel says that paying tax cannot be construed as treason, hence the charge is baseless.

Speaking in court, he said that anyone employed anywhere is obliged to pay tax, and there’s nothing a person can do about it; living in Ukraine, his client simply paid what he owed as a registered sole trader, and that where a state chooses to spend its tax revenue is beyond the control of any individual taxpayer.

Treason prosecutions in Russia have risen sharply since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code was broadened to cover “providing assistance” to a foreign state in activities directed against Russia’s security. Russian courts have since convicted people of treason for donating money to Ukrainian charitable and military funds, but applying the law to tax payments pushes the practice further. Such cases are heard behind closed doors.