Eco-activist from Tuapse arrested over alleged links to ‘Crimson Wedge’

Denis Matveev, an environmental activist from Tuapse, has been accused of involvement in the Crimson Wedge — Independent Kuban movement, which the FSB regards as a structural division of the Free Nations of PostRussia Forum, according to 7×7.

A criminal case was opened against Denis Matveev on charges of involvement in a terrorist organisation (Article 205.5 of the Russian Criminal Code). He was detained on 21 August and subsequently remanded in custody.

Denis Matveev previously sat on the council of Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC) and campaigned to protect the natural environment of Krasnodar Krai.

In 2024, Russia’s Supreme Court designated the Free Nations of PostRussia Forum and its 172 ‘structural divisions’, including the Crimson Wedge, as a terrorist organisation. One of the movement’s founders was Yevgeny Bursanidis, a native of Sochi who has lived in Greece since 2011; he was sentenced in absentia in March 2026. Frederick du Bois, another Sochi resident, was convicted in person in February 2026 and sentenced to 11 years in a penal colony over his involvement in the Crimson Wedge.

The movement’s founders advocate Kuban’s independence from Russia and say it is oriented ‘first and foremost towards the region’s Ukrainian-Cossack element’. The name refers to an unofficial nineteenth-century term: the Crimson Wedge (Pink Ukraine, lit. Raspberry Wedge) was used to describe the area of Kuban densely settled by Ukrainians.