The entry in the Interior Ministry's federal wanted database does not specify the charge against Bastrakov. It lists the duty unit of the St Petersburg police department for the Kalininsky District as the contact number. Mediazona was the first to note the listing.
The manager of the Listva store in Moscow told the Ostorozhno, Novosti outlet that Bastrakov last visited in the summer and had not been in touch since. Staff at the store learned of the wanted listing from journalists. Posts nonetheless appeared on Bastrakov's personal Telegram channel on 21 October, including items on the detention of blogger Rotten Kepken and the temporary removal of a Solzhenitsyn monument in the Primorye region. Commenting on the removal, he criticised "colleagues in the trade" who he said were occupied with denunciations.
Illustrator Artur Zeberg, who worked with the publishing house, has also been placed on the wanted list. According to Mediazona, the 31-year-old Zeberg is a military medic and illustrator from St Petersburg who worked closely with Black Hundred. He was declared wanted earlier, on 6 August. Zeberg has said he first travelled to the Donbas in 2014, immediately after completing his medical education, and returned to the front after the start of the full-scale invasion.
Bastrakov founded Black Hundred in 2013. The publishing house issued "The Code of Honour of a Russian Officer", comics from the White émigré community and books about the war in eastern Ukraine. Listva stores later opened in St Petersburg and Moscow, becoming venues for meetings of the Russian far-right community, lectures and discussions.
After the start of the full-scale invasion, Bastrakov set up the TYL-22 project to deliver aid to Russian servicemen and residents of occupied areas of Ukraine, including Mariupol. In the autumn of 2022, according to Ostorozhno, Novosti, he and several publishing house employees voluntarily joined the 123rd regiment of the so-called Donetsk People's Militia, where he worked on military communications and the supply of units. Black Hundred's Telegram channel said at the time that Bastrakov, art director Nikita Lukinsky and technical director Timur Venkov were among those who took the oath as "new recruits of the DPR armed forces".
In 2026 Bastrakov, Venkov and Lukinsky sued the military bodies of the self-proclaimed DPR, with the draft commission and the military enlistment office named as defendants. A year ago, Important Stories, citing a leaked database of "cargo 500" casualty records, reported that the Black Hundred founder and his colleagues had already been listed as absent without leave in November 2023. According to the outlet, this may have been connected to a transfer to another unit, and the search was called off after some time.
In September, associates published photographs of Bastrakov at a religious procession in Moscow led by Patriarch Kirill. He complained at the time that the organisers had banned their banner about Soviet repression of believers.
It remains unknown what prompted the wanted listings for Bastrakov and Zeberg and under which article they are being pursued.