Warrantless harassment: Russian security services are using a legal loophole to “inspect” the homes of suspected dissidents

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“Then he started cutting my ear”

On June 25, a member of the Yekaterinburg Anarchist Confederation, Yegor (name changed), received a call at work. It was from his landlady, who told him the neighbors upstairs were flooding his apartment and that he needed to come home immediately.

Trusting her, Yegor promised he would be back in half an hour. However, when he reached the apartment and put his key in the lock, a special forces officer burst out from inside. “It seemed to me he had the Wagner PMC emblem on his uniform,” Yegor recalled. The officer knocked him to the floor, pinned him with a knee, handcuffed him, and dragged him into the apartment.

Inside were several FSB officers and witnesses. Yegor was handcuffed to a radiator and beaten. “They asked about my involvement in the Yekaterinburg Anarchist Confederation and demanded I say where my comrade was — the one I lived with in this apartment,” he said.

The questioning came with threats and torture. When Yegor refused to unlock his phone, one of the officers held a knife to his ear. “He said, ‘Unlock it!’ I answered that I wouldn’t,” Yegor said. “Then he started cutting my ear. The scar is significant.”

The 25-year-old invoked Article 51 of the Russian Constitution, which allows a person not to testify against themselves. He remained silent while the FSB officers continued their threats and pressure. “They said they would find my comrade, that they would use violence against her too, give her a long prison term,” Yegor recalled. “They said directly: I could get eight years, and she could get five. So it wasn’t only about me, but about her as well.”

At some point, one of the officers removed his mask and read out a regional court order authorizing a pre-investigation check justified under Article 282.1 of the Russian Criminal Code — “organization of an extremist community.” In practice, the scene was indistinguishable from a search: masks, rifles, violence, seizure of electronic devices. But formally, it was an “inspection of the premises.”

That substitution, said OVD-Info lawyer Eva Levenberg, has become a troubling trend in recent years. A search is allowed only after a criminal case is opened and with a court warrant, but an “inspection” can be carried out earlier — at the stage when officers are checking on reports of a crime. Formally, the purpose is to record the condition of the premises, not to seek evidence.

Coerced consent

The officers entered the apartment using the landlady. “FSB officers came to her home,” Yegor said. “She didn’t believe them at first and went with them to the Third Police Department to make sure they were really officers. Then they returned together and went into my apartment. She opened the door with her key.”

The woman was shown a regional court order. The document referred to an “inspection of the premises,” but she assumed it was a search warrant. “They scared her that she could be charged as an accomplice and given a sentence; she was very frightened,” Yegor said. “They threatened to jail her too, so she let them in. And then she called me, telling me to come quickly.”

According to OVD-Info’s Levenberg, the key aim of security officers is to make someone open the door. Without a court decision, they can enter only with the voluntary consent of residents, which they can extract with threats or procedural substitutions. People often do not know they have the right not to let anyone in, and afterward are presented with a backdated “consent” form. The crucial phrase, she said, is: “I do not give consent to entry, I request a court decision” — one with date and signature.

No record, no lawyer

By the time Yegor entered his apartment, it had already been ransacked. “They had piled up a lot of things before I even got there,” he said. “They continued in my presence: equipment, SIM cards, phones, laptops, even stickers and clothes with prints. Some items, I think, they just stole.”

The officers briefly explained that their actions were part of the pre-investigation check and made an inventory. “They read it out,” Yegor said. “I wanted to sign it with the note ‘I disagree with the above,’ because it stated that I was already formally accused. But they told me: ‘either you sign without any comments, or it will be counted as refusal.’ In the end, they called witnesses and recorded my ‘refusal.’”

During an “inspection,” seizures are allowed only in limited cases and only of items that are “in plain sight” and clearly related to the matter under review. In practice, however, officers use their access as an opportunity for a full-scale search: opening drawers to take equipment, clothing, and documents.

Yegor’s requests for a lawyer fell on deaf ears. “I asked several times for a defense attorney, but there was no reaction,” he said.

Formally, a person retains basic rights: the inviolability of the home, the right to defense and legal counsel, the right to video record the process, and the right to add objections to the protocol. In practice, however, officers often prevent objections from being recorded, refuse to provide copies of documents, and leave protocols one-sided.

Human rights lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov said confusion arises because Russian law sets out two parallel procedures. A search is possible only after a criminal case has been opened and a court warrant has been obtained (even if, in urgent cases, a search can be conducted without one, after which the court is required to review the legality of the officers’ actions).

Meanwhile, an “inspection of the premises” is formally considered an operational-search measure. Because it infringes on constitutional rights — primarily the inviolability of the home and private life — it also requires a court order. Conducting an inspection can not simply be done at the initiative of an individual officer.

In practice, however, this procedure is used as a workaround: since a search before a criminal case is impossible, investigators seek court approval for an “inspection.” Legally, such decisions can be appealed, but challenges are almost always unsuccessful.

“The Eye of Sauron is already on you”

After the “inspection,” Yegor was taken to a police station. He was not recorded by the duty officer, meaning he was not officially considered detained. “When they walked me down the street, they hid my face, bent my head down, even wanted to put a bag over it,” Yegor recalled. “In the car they put me face-down on the floor, tied my hands so tightly that they swelled. I was afraid I would lose them.”

At the station, he was brought into an office on the fourth floor. He had no official status — not as a suspect, not as a witness — and therefore no right to call a lawyer. Instead of a formal interrogation, several FSB officers threatened him. “They said I’d be jailed for a long time, that in the detention center I’d be beaten and raped,” Yegor said. “They said that I could ‘accidentally fall on a shiv,’ and that they would find my comrade and use violence against her too.”

Yegor repeatedly invoked Article 51 of the Constitution, refusing to answer questions. He spent about five hours that way. At one point, he was allowed to make a call to his lawyer. Yegor used the opportunity to delete Telegram from his phone, which contained correspondence with activists across the country. The officers noticed, beat him, and tore the phone from his hands. But they never gained access to his main account.

In the end, the authorities presented him with a statement to sign. “The officers saw that on VKontakte I was an administrator of the Yekaterinburg Anarchist Confederation group,” Yegor recalled. “I realized that if I didn’t sign, they would jail me for at least 15 days and keep building a case. So I told them about meetings and putting up leaflets — nothing serious, so no one else would be endangered. That was enough for them.” Errors in the text — mixed-up numbers and surnames — also gave him a reason to sign: “I thought that way they would have less chance of using it against us.”

Similar “status-free conversations” took place in Yekaterinburg in the same days with another activist, Valentin (name changed). He was seized on the street by men he suspects were FSB officers. They restrained Valentin, beat him, ordered to give up his phone password, and threatened that a refusal to comply would lead to him being “taken to the forest.”

Valentin’s phone was confiscated even before the “inspection” at his apartment. There, in the presence of witnesses, officers went through his Telegram correspondence on his computer and seized Maoist stickers and books, but they did not give him a copy of the protocol or allow a lawyer to be present. Valentin himself was released after a “preventive conversation” at the station. As in Yegor’s case, the goal was clear: gather information and intimidate.

OVD-Info lawyer Eva Levenberg described the purpose of such visits:

“In my experience, these ‘lightweight’ visits serve mainly to gather evidence — the authorities’ suspicion is still raw, and under even minimal legality checks there isn’t enough data to authorize a full search. That’s why it is critical not to feed the authorities extra details at this stage: no verbal explanations, no voluntary handovers, no free access to devices.”

She also pointed to a “paradoxical plus”: such visits are an early warning. “It’s a chance to realize the Eye of Sauron is already on you, and to prepare for a full search.”

“If I don’t cooperate, they’ll detain me again”

After several hours of interrogation at the station, Yegor was released. He suspected the case would likely proceed to criminal charges. “They threatened me directly that if I didn’t cooperate, they would detain me again and treat me differently,” he said.

Immediately afterward, Yegor contacted OVD-Info from a passerby’s phone and asked for help. The group later assisted him in leaving the country. At the time of publication, he was safe.

However, his equipment and personal belongings seized during the “inspection” were never returned. “The lawyers can’t get a straight answer: they aren’t shown the documents, the items aren’t released,” Yegor said. “They say I have to come in and pick them up myself. To me, that looked like an attempt to lure me back to the station.”

His lawyer was only able to obtain confirmation from the regional court that an “inspection of the premises” had indeed been carried out as part of an operational-search measure. The document itself was given solely to law enforcement officers and remains in their possession as a single copy.

From anarchists to lawyers: “inspection” as a universal tool of pressure

Yegor’s story is one of many. In November 2024 in Kurgan, an “inspection” turned into a criminal case against Nadezhda Mikhailova. Security officers seized her phones and laptop, and a month later she was charged with “financing extremist activity.” The reason was a years-old transfer of 2,100 rubles (about $24) to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by the late Alexei Navalny. By that time she had already left Russia, but in February 2025 a court ordered her arrest in absentia for two months.

In July 2023, armed officers in Russian-occupied Crimea stormed the home of Jehovah’s Witness Viktor Ursu. They refused to show IDs, did not allow the family to get dressed, and seized all electronic equipment. Ursu spent two weeks in detention before being placed under house arrest. He was later put under travel restrictions. Prosecutors are now seeking a seven-year prison term for him.

In May 2025, even lawyers were targeted by “inspections.” In Kaliningrad, the formal basis was an order from the regional court chair, which alleged “suspicion” of treason against defense attorney Maria Bonzler, who represents political prisoner Igor Baryshnikov. FSB officers also visited her colleagues, Roman Morozov and Yekaterina Selizarova. At Morozov’s home they seized equipment and hard drives and asked if he had ties to the human rights group Memorial.

A similar approach was used in November 2024 against lawyers with Crimea Solidarity. At the homes of Rustem Kyamilev and Lilia Gemedzhi, officers from the Center for Countering Extremism carried out “inspections of premises” on the basis of a ruling from Simferopol’s Kyiv District Court. Officers forced Kyamilev and his son face down on the floor, seized their phones, and took documents related to Gemedzhi’s legal practice. Kyamilev was issued two administrative citations — for “display of banned symbols” and for “discrediting the army.”

In short, the “inspection” has ceased to be an exception and has become a universal tool of pressure. Only the pretexts vary: in some cases it is a “crime report review,” in others “suspicion of treason.” But the outcome is always the same: seizure of equipment, an undefined legal status, and the looming risk of another knock at the door.

What to do if faced with an “inspection” in Russia

Lawyer Eva Levenberg advises:

• Before opening the door, calmly ask what exactly is being conducted: a search, an inspection, or a survey. If there is no court decision (as in the case of an inspection or survey), you have the full right not to open the door. But if officers are insistent and you fear damage, ask for and copy down the details of documents, officers’ IDs, and any court order (if it concerns a residence).
  
  
• Immediately state that you want a lawyer and ask that proceedings wait until they arrive; if refused, request that the refusal be entered in the protocol.
  
  
• Regarding phones and computers: do not provide passwords and do not unlock devices, even briefly.
  
  
• Insist on proper procedural documentation of any actions involving digital information, and invoke Article 51 of the Constitution if asked to disclose information that could be used against you.
  
  
• When signing any papers, include detailed comments and demand copies on the spot.