Merkacheva, a member of Russia's Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, said the court heard the case against Denis Vashchuk in two sessions and that the programmer pleaded not guilty.
Investigators alleged that Vashchuk knew his acquaintance intended to travel to Ukraine and join an organization banned in Russia. The 700-ruble transfer became the basis for the terrorism-financing charge under Part 1.1 of Article 205.1 of the Criminal Code.
According to MSK1, cited by Mediazona, Vashchuk met the man in Moscow in 2022. The man let the programmer live at his home rent-free in exchange for buying groceries and helping with household chores. The acquaintance later left for the Bryansk Region and asked for 3,000 rubles for travel to Ukraine, but Vashchuk refused to send the money.
The acquaintance's mother then contacted him and asked him to help her son return to Moscow. Vashchuk transferred 700 rubles. The defense argued that the case file contained a ticket to Moscow bought with that money, and that the correspondence showed Vashchuk had refused to pay for a trip to Ukraine.
E1.RU reported that the programmer's acquaintance suffered from schizophrenia. According to the lawyer, he was ruled insane, and Merkacheva described him as a mentally ill Muscovite. After returning to Moscow, he was detained in a case over an attempt to join banned organizations.
In March 2022, Vashchuk was questioned as a witness in the acquaintance's case and released. The defense argued that security officers threatened him with detention and forced him to sign a report that distorted his words.
The programmer was detained on December 30, 2025, during a trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow. He was initially charged with petty hooliganism and placed under administrative arrest, and a criminal case was opened against him on January 12, 2026. Merkacheva wrote that the prosecutor's office returned the materials for additional investigation and that the charge was reclassified several times.
Vashchuk was born in Blagoveshchensk in the Amur Region, graduated from a local university in a field related to economics and then worked in IT. He lived and worked in the Far East, Yakutia, Novy Urengoy and Moscow, pursued photography and ran a YouTube channel about travel. He was a member of the Communist Party and took part in public events and state youth programs. His name is on the list of terrorists and extremists maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, Russia's financial monitoring agency.