Moscow-born and Kyiv-based film award winner charged with high treason during a trip to renew his passport

Aleksandr Kondratov, who is currently in custody on a charge of high treason, was detained on 5 May at passport control at Vnukovo Airport. Political Prisoners Memorial has learned this.

Aleksandr Kondratov was born and raised in Moscow but had lived in Kyiv since 2012, where his family remained. Despite everyone’s attempts to talk him out of it, he decided to travel to Russia to renew his passport. It is not known what exactly attracted the attention of the Russian security services.

On 9 August, Mediazona learned that Aleksandr Kondratov had been remanded in custody on a charge of high treason (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code). His remand in custody was preceded by a ‘carousel’ of administrative arrests totalling more than 70 days.

Aleksandr Kondratov was placed in Moscow’s SIZO-7 remand prison, known as Kapotnya, and is expected to be transferred to SIZO-3, Presnya, after quarantine.

Aleksandr Kondratov is 52. For many years he worked as a production designer in the Russian and Ukrainian film industries, and received the Golden Eagle and TEFI awards for his work on the 2007 television series Liquidation.

In 2025, our project published a piece on the risks that returning to Russia, or visiting occupied territories, poses for Russian émigrés and Ukrainians — Should I stay, or should I go (back)? 16 stories of Russians who returned to their homeland and ended up behind bars. In it, we noted that those most at risk of prosecution are ‘returnees’ who had made public anti-war statements or donated to any Ukrainian funds or initiatives. Recent cases show that simply having lived in Ukraine is, in itself, enough to attract heightened interest from the Russian security services, which can escalate into criminal prosecution. On 12 August, for instance, it emerged that Oleh Variukhin, who had run a business in Ukraine and flown to Russia to visit relatives, was charged with high treason over tax payments made to the Ukrainian state budget.