Russian man who disappeared in Uzbekistan before surfacing in Moscow jail sentenced to 23 years

A Russian man who vanished while working in Uzbekistan and later surfaced in a Moscow detention centre has been sentenced to 23 years in prison on treason charges, according to the independent outlet Mediazona.

Georgy Pirogov, a 37-year-old resident of the Moscow region, left Russia after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine and found work as an industrial climber in Georgia. In the summer of 2024, he traveled to Uzbekistan on a work trip. He disappeared on 6 July; he was supposed to show up for work in the city of Qońirat, but his car was found about 90 kilometres away. According to people who knew him, he had planned to drive to Bukhara and fly from there to Tbilisi.

Several days later, it was reported that a Moscow’s court had sent Pirogov to the city’s infamous Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention centre as part of a treason case. How he had gotten to Moscow was unclear.

The court proceedings against Pirogov were held behind closed doors, and in August 2024, Mediazona reported that he had pleaded guilty and expressed remorse. In addition to his prison sentence, Pirogov was fined 800,000 rubles (€9,130).

There have been multiple cases in recent years of Russian citizens being abducted abroad and forcibly transferred to Russian prisons. In 2023, for example, activists Lev Skoryakin and Alexey Rozhkin were both captured and transferred to Russia from the Kyrgyzstani capital of Bishkek.