Sixteen-year-old student Arseny Turbin, Russia’s youngest political prisoner, wrote in an Oct. 1 letter to his mother that he was being beaten and harassed by fellow inmates at Moscow's “Vodnik” detention center, as per a report by the independent Russian publication Mediazona, which obtained the letter.
Turbin was sentenced to five years in a correctional facility in June this year for allegedly attempting to join the “Freedom of Russia” legion — a Ukraine-based paramilitary unit made up of defectors from the Russian Armed Forces and other Russian volunteers fighting on the side of Kyiv. Over the course of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the unit has made armed cross-border incursions into Russian territory alongside similar formations — including the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberia Battalion.
In his letter, Turbin wrote that a cellmate named Azizbek has been physically assaulting him and issuing threats. “This evening, after 6:00 p.m., he hit me twice on the head while I was in bed. The situation is very difficult, critical. Azizbek beat me and said that tonight, I’m [expletive deleted]. Tonight will be very tough. But I will hold on,” Turbin wrote. He also mentioned that, due to the nature of the charges he was convicted of, he has been officially listed by the detention facility as “prone to terrorism.”
Arseny’s mother, Irina Turbina, told Mediazona that, following a conflict in the cell, her son was placed in solitary confinement from Sept. 23 to 30, as were three other inmates. She also noted that since early September, the detention center’s administration has prevented her from speaking with her son over the phone.
Arseny Turbin, from the town of Livny, in western Russia's Oryol Region, was sentenced to five years in a juvenile correctional facility in June 2024 — when he was 15. According to state investigators, Turbin, influenced by Russia’s exiled opposition media, “developed radical-extremist political views,” leading him to contact the “Freedom of Russia” legion via Telegram in early June 2023 — at the age of 14 — and fill out an application to join.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claims that, by this action, the teenager had effectively joined the legion. The military formation was designated a terrorist organization in Russia in March 2023, meaning Russians who attempt to join it face up to 20 years in prison.
The verdict states that Turbin, acting as a “member” of the “terrorist organization,” received instructions from an unidentified representative of the legion and distributed leaflets in his neighbors' mailboxes criticizing Vladimir Putin. The message on the leaflets was: “Do you want this kind of president?” In court, Turbin maintained that he had not joined the legion and that he had distributed the leaflets solely based on his personal beliefs.
Mediazona previously reported that the FSB fabricated the terrorism case against the teenager by falsifying an interrogation report. Turbin remains in custody as he awaits a review of an appeal against his conviction by Russia’s Military Court of Appeals.
The Memorial Human Rights Center, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Russian NGO, has recognized Turbin as a political prisoner. Turbin has also been added to the Russian state’s official list of terrorists and extremists, becoming its youngest member.