The home of Alexander Lunin, a former commander in the Sudoplatov volunteer battalion who recorded a video appeal to Vladimir Putin threatening a military mutiny, has been searched by Russian law enforcement authorities. Lunin’s wife, Tatyana Lunina, described the search in a TikTok video that was later deleted but has been preserved by a Telegram channel. Lunin’s Telegram channel later reported he had been held administratively liable for his words and detained for 11 days.
According to Tatyana Lunina, her husband had driven to Moscow the day before, then stopped responding to calls. Police came overnight to the family’s home in the village of Lizinovka in the Rossoshansky District of Russia’s Voronezh Region. They seized “everything they found: flash drives, computers, laptops, a disk, nunchucks,” she said. Lunina said she was home with two children and did not see a search warrant.
Tatyana Lunina later wrote on the Russian social network VK that her husband was “alive and well” and that he had asked others to refrain from publishing information about him, giving interviews, or responding to comments. A post later appeared on Lunin’s Telegram channel under the name of its administrator, a family acquaintance. It said Tatyana Lunina had reported that her husband had been “held administratively liable and detained for 11 days.” There is still no information regarding the article of Russia’s administrative code under which Lunin was charged, nor about the court that ordered his arrest.
On June 25, Lunin published a video appeal to Putin that drew more than 15 million views in two days. The veteran said Russian soldiers were being subjected to torture and abuse by their commanders for refusing to carry out “stupid and suicidal” orders — or for their refusal to hand over money to their superiors. Lunin demanded a “live audience” with Putin, saying:
“If I do not come to the Kremlin soon and appear live on the air next to you, the army will turn its weapons against the Kremlin.”
In the same video, Lunin claimed he was relaying a message he had received from people he described as representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry and unnamed security agencies. There is no confirmation that officials from those agencies met with him or passed along such a message.
Lunin previously said he had been invited to Moscow to discuss problems facing Russian soldiers. The independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo reported that Lunin fought in the Sudoplatov volunteer battalion, where he commanded a reconnaissance unit.
