Igor Yakovenko, a 52-year-old political prisoner, died in Krasnodar’s Pretrial Detention Center No. 1, according to a report by Memorial’s Support for Political Prisoners project. Yakovenko is at least the ninth political prisoner to die in Russian custody since the start of 2026, according to a count by The Insider. Human rights advocates said he had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.
Several days before his death, Yakovenko underwent medical examinations and was then returned to the detention center “for palliative care.” Memorial also said Yakovenko had been beaten at the facility before he was sentenced.
On Oct. 3, 2025, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Yakovenko to five years in prison on charges of preparing to take part in the activities of a terrorist organization. Prosecutors alleged that on May 28, 2025, he began corresponding with a person involved in recruiting Russians for the Freedom of Russia Legion, which Russian authorities have designated a terrorist organization. Yakovenko allegedly planned to travel to Ukraine, sending the person a completed application form to join the Legion. FSB officers detained him two days later. Authorities did not disclose how they learned about the correspondence.
Memorial recognized Yakovenko as a political prisoner. The movement’s human rights advocates said they did not have access to the case files and therefore could not determine whether he genuinely intended to join the Legion or if had been the victim of an entrapment scheme. Memorial noted that only two days passed between Yakovenko sending the application and his arrest:
“Such a rapid sequence of events may indicate that from the outset he wrote to one of the Legion’s fake websites and sent his application there as well.”
In addition to Yakovenko, at least eight other political prisoners have died in Russian custody since the start of 2026:
- Roman Sidorkin died on Jan. 9 in the Saratov Region. The former employee of a defense company in the Kursk Region had been convicted of treason after investigators accused him and his former wife of passing technical documentation and samples of military products to Ukrainian intelligence. Sidorkin developed bronchitis-like symptoms in December 2025, and later pneumonia. He was hospitalized only four days before his death.
- Oleg Tyryshkin, a former miner and trade union activist from Kemerovo Region, died on Feb. 4 at age 64. He had been sentenced to two years in a penal colony over a comment posted on the social network VK about the 2004 death of Akhmat Kadyrov, the first president of Chechnya and the father of its current leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. Activists who corresponded with prisoners said heart problems were the cause of his death. Tyryshkin had previously complained about his health, including about a brain cyst.
- Alexander Dotsenko died on Feb. 19 after a massive heart attack. The jewelry artist had been sentenced to three years in a penal colony in a case involving anti-war postcards left in a Lenta supermarket in St. Petersburg. His wife, Anastasia Dyudyayeva, received a 3½-year sentence in the same case. After Dotsenko’s heart attack, prison officials failed to inform his relatives and lawyer about his condition for several days.
- Vladimir Osipov died in March at a pretrial detention center in Ukhta, where he had been transferred from the Moscow Region. The 56-year-old had been sentenced to 6½ years in a penal colony over posts made on Odnoklassniki about the Russian military and Vladimir Putin. Ambulances were called for Osipov several times during his trial, and at one hearing the judge refused to postpone his final statement despite complaints of high blood pressure.
- Andrei Akuzin, a 53-year-old artist from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, died by suicide on April 8 at a local pretrial detention center — six days after he was arrested. His friend said the criminal case stemmed from an online comment. Russia’s financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring, added Akuzin to its registry of “terrorists and extremists” only after his death.
- Vegan Khristolyub Bozhiy, formerly named Dmitry Kuznetsov, died on April 17 at Penal Colony No. 2 in Voronezh. The 43-year-old preacher and YouTube blogger, whose name can be loosely translated as “Vegan Christ-Lover of God,” had been sentenced to three years in prison over videos criticizing the invasion of Ukraine, the Soviet army, and Islam. It later emerged that he had been found hanged in a punishment cell and that, according to media reports, a negligence case was opened against the prison’s employees. His relatives did not believe the official account of suicide.
- Vladimir Yarotsky was found dead on the morning of May 7 at Penal Colony No. 9 in Khadyzhensk in Russia’s Krasnodar Region. The artist had been sentenced to five and a half years in prison on charges of spreading “false information” about the Russian armed forces and “desecrating symbols of military glory” over posts that included a caricature of Putin featuring a penis and a St. George ribbon. Authorities said Yarotsky died by suicide. Another prisoner said the artist had complained of pressure from the prison administration.
- Ibragim Kudzhanov, a 52-year-old resident of Ukraine’s Luhansk Region, died at Penal Colony No. 8 in the Omsk Region. His death became known in July. Kudzhanov had been sentenced to 5½ years in prison for serving as a driver in Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion in 2018 and 2019. His daughter said he had been tortured with electric shocks after his detention and that he died from a second heart attack accompanied by an aneurysm and kidney failure. His son, Artyom, is also imprisoned in Russia after being sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony on espionage charges in 2025.
