The Insider has identified two officers of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) whom political prisoner Azat Miftakhov names in his account of torture at the IK-18 “Polar Owl” prison colony in the remote settlement of Kharp, nearly 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle. They are Mikhail Sobolev from Tyumen and Pavel Kiselev from the Sverdlovsk Region. According to Miftakhov, Sobolev personally took part in beatings, threats of rape and torture, while Kiselev was in the room while the political prisoner was being tortured with electric shocks. The Polar Owl facility is notably down the road from IK-3 Polar Wolf, the prison where opposition politician Alexei Navalny was murdered with a deadly toxin in February 2024.
Azat Miftakhov, a political prisoner and mathematician, recently reported that he was tortured on April 21, shortly after being transferred to Penal Colony No. 18 (IK-18), known by its moniker “Polar Owl,” in the urban locality of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. The Insider obtained Miftakhov’s detailed account of how prison staff and two inmates acting on their orders tortured him for several hours. According to Miftakhov, the torture was triggered by his refusal to obey the administration’s demands, including cleaning a toilet in the operations department, which prisoners call “Lubyanka.”
In Miftakhov’s account, IK-18 employee Mikhail Sobolev appears as one of the main perpetrators of the torture. Miftakhov said Sobolev summoned two inmates who knocked him to the floor, tied him up with tape, and began beating him. Miftakhov says Sobolev personally sat on his back, causing him to suffocate and lose consciousness, hit him on the head, pinched his nose and mouth shut, and took part in threats to rape him and dunk him into a sewer manhole.
According to Miftakhov, Pavel Kiselev was on the second floor of the operations department, where the political prisoner was taken after the first round of torture. There, wires were attached to the prisoner’s toes, and he was tortured with electric shocks while loud music was played to drown out his screams. Miftakhov named Kiselev among the officers present in the room during the torture.
Mikhail Sobolev
The Insider independently confirmed that 40-year-old Mikhail Sobolev from Tyumen works at IK-18, the Polar Owl prison colony in Kharp. According to leaked online databases, Sobolev has served as a FSIN officer at the colony since at least 2022, when his yearly income from IK-18 totaled 1,176,092 rubles (approximately $16,000 at current exchange rates).
Sobolev likely first joined the Federal Penitentiary Service in the summer of 2016, at IK-2 in Tyumen. Traces of his work at that colony appear through at least 2019. Before that, in 2015, Sobolev worked for the private security company Strazh. In 2020, he apparently moved to Kharp: that was when his first links to addresses in the village appeared, while links to addresses in Tyumen ended.
Sobolev’s profile on the Russian social network VK lists the Tyumen Institute for Advanced Training of Interior Ministry Employees under the “Education” section, while the status on his page reads: “Life is beautiful!!!” Among his subscriptions are his employer, the Federal Penitentiary Service directorate for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, and the communities “Corporation of Evil” and “Moonshiners.”
Mikhail Sobolev’s wife, Viktoria Soboleva, also works in the penitentiary system. In 2022, she served at IK-3, known as Polar Wolf, a prison colony in Kharp where Alexei Navalny was killed in 2024. However, in 2024, Viktoria Soboleva was already listed on the official VK page of the Federal Penitentiary Service directorate for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District as an employee of IK-18 Polar Owl.
The Sobolevs have two children: a 10-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter. Their son has taken part in Federal Penitentiary Service departmental competitions from an early age. In 2024, he was named best reciter in the “Artistic Word” talent contest for the children of penitentiary system employees. The contest, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service directorate for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, was held in part “to foster patriotism and civic consciousness, strengthen the authority of the family and traditional family values, and build interest in service at institutions and bodies of the penitentiary system.” At the time, the Sobolevs’ 8-year-old son performed the poem “Shield of the Russian State.”
Pavel Kiselev
The Insider was also able to identify the second man in Miftakhov’s account as Pavel Pavlovich Kiselev, a 35-year-old native of the city of Tavda in the Sverdlovsk Region.
Kiselev has long worked in the Federal Penitentiary Service. According to leaked databases, in 2016-2017 he was linked to IK-5 Metallostroy in St. Petersburg, then worked in institutions under FSIN’s directorate in the Sverdlovsk Region. From 2018 to 2020, he received income from IK-19 in his native Tavda, and from 2020 to 2022 from IK-24 in the village of Azanka in the Tavda District. At IK-24, Kiselev held the post of senior operative officer. In 2022, his income at that colony totaled 754,966 rubles (just over $10,000 at current exchange rates).
Kiselev has been linked to Kharp since 2023. He and his daughter, born in 2016, are mentioned on the VK page of the local elementary school. In February 2026, Kiselev attended a school event wearing the uniform of a Federal Penitentiary Service captain. In the school’s post, he was called “an example of a worthy man and caring father raising two wonderful daughters.” The post was later reposted by the official page of the Federal Penitentiary Service directorate for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.
Kiselev’s wife,42-year-old Yana Zachinyayeva, is a native of the eastern German city of Dresden. Unlike Mikhail Sobolev’s spouse, she does not work for the Federal Penitentiary Service. Leaked databases also reveal that Zachinyayeva was placed on Russia’s federal wanted list in 2005 after allegedly fleeing investigation and trial in a drug trafficking case.
Zachinyayeva now works in beauty services in Kharp. Her page describes her as a “certified specialist in manicures, pedicures and polymer wax depilation” with five years of experience, and lists her workplace in Kharp’s Molodezhny quarter. Kiselev and Zachinyayeva have two daughters, aged 8 and 9.
A torture colony
Headed by 49-year-old Lt. Col. Alexander Tsybulsky, IK-18 “Polar Owl” in Kharp has long been regarded as one of Russia’s most brutal penal colonies. It primarily holds prisoners serving life sentences, but also has a maximum-security section, where Miftakhov was transferred. Over the years, reports from Polar Owl have described “torture cells,” where prisoners are subjected to abuse at the hands of other inmates on orders from the prison administration as a means of pressure or intimidation.
One of the most high-profile cases involved the mass coercion of confessions. In 2014, a court in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District found former senior operative Yuri Sandrkin of IK-18 and convict Vadim Zhuravlev guilty in a case involving coercion of confessions from prisoners. Under their pressure, Polar Owl inmates confessed to involvement in 190 high-profile crimes, including the killings of journalists Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Klebnikov, as well as Akhmad Kadyrov, the father of Chechnya’s current leader Ramzan Kadyrov. It later emerged that the confessions were false self-incriminations.
Independent outlet Novaya Gazeta reported that IK-18 had created a “conveyor belt” for producing false confessions. Prisoners were forced to write confessions under threats that they would be transferred to cells with “lower-status” inmates or to the aforementioned “torture cells.” Some prisoners said they were beaten and tortured. The court found Sandrkin guilty of abuse of office involving violence or threats of violence and sentenced him to 3.5 years in a general-security penal colony. Zhuravlev received four years, but the sentence did not affect his actual term, as he was already serving life.
Another well-known episode involved the case of neo-Nazi Alexei Voevodin, known by the nickname “SVR” (the acronym for Russia’s foreign intelligence agency), who was sentenced to life in prison for a series of killings motivated by racism and xenophobia. In 2021, Voevodin, inmate Alexander Ageyev, and IK-18 operative Igor Nesterenko went on trial in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. Voevodin and Ageyev were accused of murdering a cellmate with particular cruelty, causing serious bodily harm to other prisoners, and torture. Nesterenko was charged with abuse of office and organizing prisoner torture.
According to case materials, Voevodin said that after arriving at Polar Owl, an operative offered him to “help the administration manage prisoners” — meaning inmates who complained about the administration or violated internal rules. In exchange, Voevodin said, he was promised everyday privileges. According to his testimony, the “help” involved him and Ageyev beating prisoners placed in their cell, sometimes with a bar of laundry soap wrapped in a towel.
One prisoner, Vladimir Zakharkin, died after such a beating. He had previously complained about incarceration conditions and won a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, which awarded him 21,000 euros in compensation. After that, Zakharkin hired lawyers and continued filing complaints. According to the version set out in the case materials, he was placed in a cell with Voevodin and Ageyev, where he was beaten and died the same day.
