Valery Zaitsev

A schoolboy from Solnechny settlement in Khabarovsk Krai. He was detained on October 12, 2023 in the inpatient ward of the children's department of a tuberculosis clinic and sent to custody on charges of training for terrorist activities because of a video showing teenagers throwing Molotov cocktails at the wall of an abandoned building. His classmates noted in the Mediazona piece that Zaytsev has Ukrainian roots and "supported Ukraine even before the start of the Special Military Operation." Later, Mediazona wrote that Zaytsev had been running anti-war groups on social networks before the case was initiated.

Later it became known that Zaitsev was also accused of involvement in the activities of a terrorist organisation: the investigation considered him involved in the activities of the Azov battalion.

Zaitsev's grandmother in a conversation with Mediazona suggested that the video with Molotov cocktails was filmed by a provocateur who acted as a secret witness at the trial. "The provocateurs brought this petrol, showed how to do everything, and Valerka posted it," she told Mediazona.

On August 16, 2024, the young man was sentenced to four and a half years in an educational colony.

You can read more about politically persecuted people in the Telegram channel OVD-Info LIVE and our database of politically motivated criminal prosecutions.