The project Gulagu.net, which provided assistance to prisoners in Russian jails and penal colonies and worked to combat torture, is ceasing operations, the organization announced on its Telegram channel.
In a statement, the project said its staff are under pressure “from all sides.” The authors complained of “squabbling, hate, and bullying,” blocked accounts, and discrimination. “We are being harassed, we are being insulted and spoken rudely to with this 'good Russians' and so on, our accounts are being blocked and we are openly discriminated against without cause, we are being pressured from all sides and within our 'emigrated' community, the special services and the idiots useful to them are stirring up squabbling, hate, and bullying, the most effective opponents of the Kremlin can be killed (and sometimes are killed),” the statement said.
The project emphasized that it does not want to create additional risks for those who “are still holding on inside the perimeter” and for those who were forced to leave Russia. “We did what we could. And we did a lot,” Gulagu.net added.
The project was founded by former businessman Vladimir Osechkin, who left Russia in 2015 and now lives in France. In February 2025, he was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison on charges of spreading “fakes” about the army. Additionally, a criminal case on fraud charges has been opened against Osechkin, and he was previously placed on a wanted list in connection with that case.
In September 2022, Osechkin said he was the target of an assassination attempt in Biarritz, France. French security forces at the time said they had no “objective evidence” of an attempted murder. In October 2025, the French newspaper Le Parisien reported that four suspects had been detained in France on suspicion of plotting to kill the human rights activist.
Collaboration with Gulagu.net has repeatedly led to criminal cases in Russia. In February 2025, in Minusinsk, two Wagner mercenaries recruited from prisons to fight in the war were sentenced to five and a half years in prison for spreading “fakes” about the army because of an interview they gave to the project. In March 2026, a court in Yekaterinburg began hearing the case of Igor Roshchin, a participant in the war in Ukraine, who is also accused of spreading “fakes” because of an interview with Gulagu.net. In the interview, the man said that up to one and a half million Russian soldiers had been killed at the front and complained of extortion and pressure from commanders.