Bogdan Yakimenko
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On June 5, 2024, eight antifascists were detained in Moscow and Rostov-on-Don in connection with the "creation of the extremist organization Antifa United." The Moscow office of the Investigative Committee reported this. The press release briefly outlined the case. According to law enforcement, the unnamed "organization" emerged "no later than June 20, 2020." It had a social media community that "engaged in recruiting individuals, including minors" and "planning hate crimes <…> against law enforcement officers" (Parts 1 and 2 of Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code). On June 6, the Simonovsky District Court of Moscow, at the request of an investigator, placed 18-year-old antifascist Roman Chizhikov under house arrest. After his arrest, Chizhikov signed a confession for his involvement in the "extremist community" Antifa United. In addition to Yakimenko and Chizhikov, the names of two other people detained in the Antifa United case are known: Ostrovsky and Popov.
Bogdan Yakimenko, aka Max Vertsinsky, was previously persecuted after a neo-Nazi group attacked him and Mikhail Ivanov in 2020. The anti-fascists spent a year under house arrest, then were placed under travel restrictions, and after their first conviction, which was later overturned, they spent eight months in pretrial detention. Last year, Bogdan was sentenced to four years of forced labor. The sentence was appealed and has not yet entered into force. Bogdan has never hidden his views and attributed the attention from Center E and the FSB to his anti-fascist activism. He did not want to leave Russia; he studied law and dreamed of becoming a lawyer.
On February 2, 2026, anti-fascist Bogdan Yakimenko was sentenced to nine years in prison. Other defendants in the Antifa United case were sentenced to 2.5 and 3.5 years. Judge Ekaterina Stepina of the Izmailovsky District Court of Moscow sentenced three antifascists in the Antifa United case, which law enforcement agencies, and now the court, consider an "extremist group." Bogdan Yakimenko was deemed by the investigation and the court to be the organizer of Antifa United; Judge Stepina sentenced him to 9 years in prison.
Other defendants, who were free before the verdict and were classified as "ordinary members of an extremist group," received significantly shorter, but still realistic, sentences. Roman Chizhikov received 3.5 years in a general regime penal colony, and Ilya Popov received 2.5 years. It's worth noting that Chizhikov and Popov cooperated with the investigation and testified against Bogdan. At the trial, they expressed remorse. Law enforcement officials, however, simply exploited them and also sent them to prison.
Bogdan never hid his views and linked the attention from the E Center and the FSB to his own anti-fascist activism. He did not want to leave Russia, studied at the Faculty of Law and dreamed of becoming a lawyer.
Address for letters and parcels: 107076, Russia, Moscow, Matrosskaya Tishina St., Bldg. 18, SIZO-1, Yakimenko Bogdan Tarasovich, born in 1999. You can send via the services PrisonMail.Online (https://prisonmail.online/) (for foreign cards). Date of birth: September 3, 1999.
