25-year-old IT developer Alexander Kachkurkin was detained in Russia immediately after being deported from Kazakhstan and arrested on charges of high treason. According to the human rights project «First Department», the grounds for criminal prosecution could be money transfers to Ukraine.
25-year-old IT developer Alexander Kachkurkin was detained in Russia immediately after being deported from Kazakhstan and arrested on charges of high treason. According to the human rights project «First Department», the grounds for criminal prosecution could be money transfers to Ukraine.
According to human rights activists, Oleksandr Kachkurkin is a Ukrainian citizen who was born and raised in Crimea. After the annexation of the peninsula in 2014, activists say Russian citizenship was imposed on him.
He later moved to Kazakhstan for political reasons, living in Almaty and working as an engineer and IT developer. He also reportedly collaborated with OpenAI, a company that develops GPT language models.
As Deutsche Welle reports, in late January, Almaty police filed two administrative reports against Kachkurkin — for crossing the road in an unauthorized place and smoking a hookah indoors. Human rights activists claim that both reports were fabricated.
Based on these, the court ruled to expel him from Kazakhstan — allegedly for «disrespect for the laws and sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan.» The entire process — from drawing up protocols to deportation — took several hours, while such procedures usually last weeks or months.
After the plane landed in Russia, Kachkurkin was detained right on board. Later, the Meshchansky Court of Moscow sent him to a pre-trial detention center as part of a criminal case under the article of high treason. The session was held behind closed doors, and the details of the accusation were not officially disclosed.
According to the First Department, the case may be related to financial aid to Ukraine. This article in the Russian Federation carries a penalty of up to life imprisonment.
Human rights activists note that in 2025, about 10% of cases of «treason», «espionage», or «confidential cooperation with a foreign state» in Russia were related to money transfers to Ukraine.
