Mineev Aleksandr Alekseevich, born on October 7, 1996, is a resident of Moscow. He was charged under Part 1, Article 30 and Part 1, Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code ('Preparation for a terrorist act'), and under Part 3, Article 30 and Part 1, Article 280 ('Attempted public calls for extremist activity'). On March 24, 2025, the court ruled to apply compulsory medical measures to Mineev in the form of involuntary treatment in a high-security psychiatric facility.
He was deprived of liberty no later than June 13, 2024.
As reported by the SHOT Telegram channel on October 9, 2023, police officers detained a suspicious young man near the Khoroshevsky Military Enlistment Office building on Tamanskaya Street in Moscow. He was attempting to film the building and surrounding area with a smartphone. The arrest itself occurred on October 7, and on October 9, Judge Tatiana Leonidovna Babenkova of the Khoroshevsky District Court sentenced Mineev to 15 days in jail, finding him guilty of violating Part 1 of Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (“Petty Hooliganism”). The court ruling stated that Mineev “committed a violation of public order, expressing clear disrespect for society, accompanied by obscene language in a public place.” It also stated that Mineev “agreed to the violation and explained that he attempted to set fire to the military enlistment office, thereby wanting to draw attention to existing problems.”
For a considerable time, nothing was known about the detainee’s fate. He may have been released home after his arrest, but it’s also possible he was subjected to “carousel arrests,” a common practice before criminal cases are opened. There is no publicly available information about this.
On June 13, 2024, Mineev was arrested on this criminal charge: Judge Dmitry Vladimirovich Budigin of the Khoroshevsky District Court remanded him to a pretrial detention facility. It was stated that he was charged under Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code with preparing a terrorist attack. It later emerged that this was related to his arrest near a military registration and enlistment office in October.
TASS, citing case materials, reports that the man attempted to set fire to a military registration and enlistment office in the capital’s Khoroshevsky District after being “contacted by supporters of Ukraine through an online messenger.”
“They took advantage of the man’s suggestibility, caused by his illness, and convinced him to set fire to the military registration and enlistment office. Mineev chose the target for the attack in the Moscow district where he lived. He repeatedly visited the military registration and enlistment office building to study its layout, security measures, and escape routes. During one of his visits, the young man was spotted by patrol police officers and detained. Law enforcement officers later examined the contents of his phones, thus learning of his plans.”
On March 24, 2025, Judge Andrei Viktorovich Pluzhnikov of the Second Western District Military Court began hearing Mineev’s criminal case and, on the same day, issued a ruling ordering him to undergo compulsory treatment. The court absolved Mineev of criminal liability “due to his state of insanity and ordered the application of compulsory medical measures in the form of psychiatric care to Mineev, ordering his placement in a psychiatric hospital with intensive observation.”
According to information available on the court’s website, only one order for compulsory treatment was issued on March 24, 2025. The case file is anonymized, and the defendant faces two charges. In addition to preparation to commit a terrorist act, he is also charged under Part 3 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Attempt to publicly call for extremist activity”).
On July 29, 2024, Rosfinmonitoring added Aleksander Mineev to Rosfinmonitoring’s register of “terrorists and extremists” with the notation “terrorism.” He was removed from the list on May 19, 2025.
Charges under Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Preparation for a terrorist act”)
Following the outbreak of full-scale war, amid the total suppression of peaceful protests in Russia, a wave of attacks on sites bearing the Z symbol and attempted arson attacks on military registration and enlistment offices and other administrative buildings occurred.
Initially, criminal cases for arson and attempted arson were primarily initiated under Part 2 of Article 167 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Intentional destruction or damage to another’s property, committed for hooligan motives, by arson, explosion, or other generally dangerous means”) or under various parts of Article 213 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Hooliganism”). Following the announcement of a partial mobilization on September 21, 2022, Rear Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky, a spokesman for the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, announced that “arsonists” would be charged with terrorism, which carries the risk of much longer prison terms. However, this has not yet become an absolute rule; some cases, even after this announcement, were opened under lesser articles of the Russian Criminal Code. According to the AvtozakLIVE project, from February 2022 to July 2025, at least 262 arson attacks on government facilities, primarily military registration and enlistment offices, were recorded. However, only 104 of these cases were prosecuted under terrorism charges.
The classification of a specific attack often depends on factors unrelated to the incident itself, such as who investigated the attack. As Mediazona noted, the FSB opened cases of terrorist attacks, while the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Investigative Committee used less severe statutes in similar situations. In some regions, such as the Krasnodar Krai and Rostov Oblast, arson attacks were more often classified as terrorist attacks.
We believe that anti-war arson attacks against various targets should not be arbitrarily classified as terrorist acts. Mechanically classifying them under this statute appears politically motivated and aimed, on the one hand, at intimidating society with inappropriately harsh punishments, and on the other, at labeling these protests as “terrorism” in the public consciousness.
According to published independent studies (Mediazona, AvtozakLIVE), penalties for attempted arson attacks against military recruitment offices and administrative buildings that occurred after the start of the war range from fines to 19 years’ imprisonment in a maximum-security penal colony. Some defendants received suspended sentences of 1.5 to 2 years, while others were sentenced to forced labor. The most common sentences ranged from 5 to 13 years. We believe that the disparate classifications of military registration and enlistment office arson cases can be characterized as an arbitrary application of the law, violating Part 1 of Article 19 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which guarantees that “all are equal before the law and the courts.”
The provisions of Part 1 of Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation read as follows: “Committing an explosion, arson, or other actions that intimidate the population and create a danger of death, causing significant property damage, or other grave consequences, with the aim of destabilizing the activities of government bodies or international organizations or influencing their decision-making, as well as the threat of committing such actions with the aim of influencing the decision-making of government bodies or international organizations.”
Thus, the following are the mandatory elements of a crime that qualify it as a terrorist act:
— intimidation of the population
— creating a danger of death, causing significant damage, or other grave consequences
— the intent to destabilize the activities of government bodies or influence their decision-making.
It is important to note that all these elements do not replace, but rather complement each other; that is, for an act to be classified as a terrorist act, each of them must be present. It is also important to consider that a terrorist act is a crime that presupposes the direct intent of the perpetrator, therefore all the elements of the objective aspect of the crime must be encompassed by their intent.
Moreover, according to paragraph 2 of Resolution No. 1 of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated February 9, 2012, “actions that by their nature are capable of causing fear in people for their lives and health, the safety of loved ones, the safety of property, etc. may be considered intimidating to the population. The danger of loss of life, significant property damage, or other grave consequences must be real, which is determined in each specific case, taking into account the location, time, weapons, means, method of committing the crime, and other circumstances of the case (information on the number of people in the area of the explosion, the power and destructive capacity of the explosive device used, etc.).”
We doubt that the actions Mineev allegedly intended to commit met the essential elements of a terrorist attack, such as intimidation of the population, creating a danger of loss of life, causing significant property damage, or other grave consequences. Aleksandr Mineev is not charged with a completed crime, but merely with preparations for its commission. Therefore, proving the presence of these elements (especially intimidation of the population) is difficult for the investigation. Moreover, there is no basis to assert that any arson attack on a military registration and enlistment office could cause the population to fear for their lives and property—the available information on similar cases that we examined does not include information about people who claimed to have experienced such feelings.
The intent to intimidate the population, like the other elements of a terrorist attack listed above, must also be present in the subjective aspect of the crime, the intent of the accused, of which we know nothing. However, even if Mineev himself had given such a confession, given the practice of blackmail and intimidation employed by security forces, there is no reason to trust this testimony. It is likely that, under these circumstances, the young man’s alleged intentions could be qualified under Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 2 of Article 30. Article 167 of the Russian Criminal Code—preparation for the intentional destruction or damage of another’s property by arson. In principle, without reliable information that he planned to commit any crime, it is impossible to judge the nature of this crime.
However, the very fact that the young man intended to set fire to the military registration and enlistment office is also questionable. He was detained near the military registration and enlistment office on October 9, 2023, arrested for hooliganism, and sent to a pretrial detention facility only on June 13, 2024. This indicates that, most likely, after examining the contents of his mobile phone and despite his alleged confession at the administrative trial, the security forces initially found insufficient evidence of his guilt to initiate criminal proceedings. However, they subsequently decided to pursue the case. Furthermore, if the young man truly intended to do so, it is unclear what prevented him from committing arson within the next eight months. If, as can be assumed, he was subjected to “carousel arrests” over the course of six months, this also indicates a lack of convincing evidence of his guilt.
The case against Mineev is in many ways reminiscent of the case of student Ibragim Orujev, who was sentenced in October 2024 to 16 years’ imprisonment under Article 205.3 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Undertaking training that the student knows is being conducted for the purpose of committing terrorist activity”) and Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Preparation to commit a terrorist act”). Orujev was arrested that same fall, on November 10, 2023, near the military registration and enlistment office on Dmitry Ulyanov Street in Moscow. It can be assumed that security forces were instructed to pay attention to young people who pay attention to military registration and enlistment offices and engage in photographing and filming.
Orujev was also accused of intending to set fire to a military registration and enlistment office. Subscriptions to Ukrainian Telegram channels were found on his phone, including a Telegram bot for the Ukrainian “I Want to Live” project to help prisoners of war. Based on these subscriptions, as well as personal notes in his notebook and diary, he was subsequently sentenced to 16 years in prison for committing serious crimes. We consider Ibrahim Orujev a political prisoner and demand his release.
According to TASS, unnamed “supporters of Ukraine” contacted Mineev. We believe the lack of specificity about who convinced him to set fire to the military registration and enlistment office also points to the dubiousness of the charges, as in the vast majority of cases, security forces, in various press releases and news reports, mention alleged perpetrators, handlers, and instigators for propaganda purposes: Azov, the Red Army, the Freedom of Russia Legion, members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, or Ukrainian intelligence. The absence of such a mention of the “customer of the terrorist attack” may also indicate the use by security forces of operational provocation, which is prohibited by law, which they are increasingly resorting to in order to fabricate cases, intimidate society and improve their own
Отправить отзыв
Charges under Part 3 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Attempt to make public calls for extremist activity”).
In addition to preparing to commit a terrorist act, Aleksandr Mineev, according to the case file, was also charged under Part 3 of Article 30 and Part 1 of Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Attempt to make public calls for extremist activity”). An attempt to commit a crime, according to Article 30 of the Russian Criminal Code, is defined as intentional actions by a person directly aimed at committing a crime, if the crime was not completed due to circumstances beyond that person’s control. It is quite difficult to understand how it is possible to fail to complete public calls and how this can be proven. It can be assumed that the young man saved a text message on his phone that he did not manage to send to a social network, and this text was then discovered by law enforcement during an inspection of his phone. However, in this case, proof of the intention to publish the text, or perhaps to deliver a speech, can only be provided by the defendant’s own testimony, which, given the circumstances of Mineev’s arrest, as noted above, is extremely difficult to trust. In any case, since we currently lack case materials, it is difficult for us to assess the merits of this charge. However, the general circumstances of the case and the groundlessness of the prosecution under Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code indirectly indicate the inadequacy of the charge under Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code. It is quite possible that the prosecution relies on Mineev’s confessions about some of his plans or ideas, expressed for bravado or recklessly, which the investigators were able to link to a criminal offense. In any case, the public danger of any call by Mineev, even if he had carried it out, would have been minimal due to the author’s insignificant status and limited influence.
Furthermore, it is known that Part 3 of Article 30, Part 1 of Article 280, and Part 2 of Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code are insufficient. Mineev was charged under Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code much later, which may also indicate its unfounded nature: we know that law enforcement agencies often artificially increase the severity of charges by adding new articles, thereby increasing the “crime clearance” rate.
Forced Placement in a Psychiatric Hospital
The use of coercive medical measures against Aleksandr Mineev is particularly concerning. We cannot judge the validity of the medical findings, but regardless of the presence or absence, nature, and severity of mental disorders, the expert opinion of which the court found justified, the court’s decision to apply coercive medical measures was made following the examination of the criminal case. A prerequisite for the application of such measures, according to Article 97 of the Russian Criminal Code, is the commission of a socially dangerous act prohibited by the Criminal Code under penalty of punishment. Since, as we have argued above, Mineev’s criminal prosecution is unlawful, the imposition of coercive measures on him is just as unlawful as imposing a punishment on him.
Involuntary confinement in a psychiatric hospital is essentially a form of deprivation of liberty and a restriction of the rights guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Therefore, the decision to commit Aleksandr Mineev to a psychiatric hospital restricts his rights without the necessary justification. This type of forced confinement in a psychiatric hospital is very reminiscent of the use of punitive psychiatry during the Soviet period against opponents of the government. Moreover, those confined to a psychiatric hospital can remain there for extended periods, sometimes exceeding the sentence they would have received under a criminal case. This practice is becoming increasingly common. Memorial, for example, considers Aleksandr Gabyshev, Aleksei Onoshkin, Maria Semerenko, and Maksim Lypkan, all forcibly confined to medical institutions, to be political prisoners.
The ‘Political Prisoners. Memorial’ human rights project, which continues the work of the Human Rights Center Memorial’s Political Prisoners Support Program, in accordance with international guidelines defining the term “political prisoner,” finds this criminal case to be politically motivated, aimed at intimidating society, i.e., helping the subject of power retain power. Aleksandr Mineev’s imprisonment violates the right to a fair trial and other rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The ‘Political Prisoners. Memorial’ human rights project considers Aleksandr Mineev a political prisoner and demands his release from a psychiatric hospital and an end to his criminal prosecution.
Recognition of an individual as a political prisoner does not imply the ‘Political Prisoners. Memorial’ human rights project agrees with, or approves, their views, statements, or actions.
How can you help?
You can make a donation on our website to help all political prisoners in Russia.
Report date: September 20, 2025
