The 2nd Western District Military Court in Moscow has sentenced 49-year-old IT specialist Yuri Belenky, who was accused of “financing terrorism,” to 13 years in prison, reports the Pervy Otdel human rights group. According to the sentence, Belenky must spend the first three years in prison and the rest of the term in a maximum-security penal colony. The court also imposed a fine of 500,000 rubles ($6,200) and ordered the confiscation of another 126,000 rubles ($1,560).
The case against Belenky was prompted by a cryptocurrency transfer to an account published by blogger Arkady Babchenko, who was raising funds for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). The Binance cryptocurrency exchange provided a report on the transfers at the request of Russia’s Investigative Committee.
Belenky had lived in Bulgaria since 2015 and held a European Union residence permit but periodically visited Russia. In September 2025, he was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on the pretext of “petty hooliganism.” Soon afterward, a criminal case was opened against him for assisting terrorist activity.
Belenky was charged with six transfers totaling 742.26 USDT (62,000 rubles, or $770) for the needs of the AFU. Babchenko’s cryptocurrency addresses are public: any user can view the transaction history and current balance. Law enforcement learned of Belenky’s specific transfers from the journalist’s Telegram chat, in which users reported their transfers.
At that time, in October 2025, the Investigative Committee sent Binance a request to provide the transfer history of several users (including Belenky), citing criminal cases opened under a “terrorism” article.
The report that the crypto exchange sent to the Investigative Committee in response contained a detailed history of Belenky’s account. The file included personal data, scans of documents, the history of cryptocurrency transfers, deposits, withdrawals, Binance Pay card transaction data, login history, and a list of trusted devices. Using the report, law enforcement learned of nine more transfers by Belenky to Babchenko’s address, as a result of which the defendant was charged with 15 transfers totaling 1,680.69 USDT (135,000 rubles, or $1,680).
Arkady Babchenko is a Russian journalist and outspoken critic of the Kremlin who left Russia in 2017. He is known for providing critical coverage of Russia’s wars in Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, and Russia’s war against Ukraine. Babchenko has worked for outlets including Novaya Gazeta and Ukraine’s ATR television channel. In 2018, Ukrainian authorities staged Babchenko’s killing in Kyiv as part of an operation that they said was meant to thwart a Russian-backed assassination plot. In July 2020, Rosfinmonitoring added Babchenko to its list of terrorists and extremists, and in April 2023, Russian authorities designated him as a “foreign agent.”
