Semyon Krasotkin was detained at Domodedovo Airport after returning from Kyrgyzstan, Vot Tak reported, citing sources. Border guards searched his phone and found "stars" — paid reactions that serve as the messenger's virtual currency. One of the outlet's interlocutors said their total value was 2,200 rubles.
Another source said Krasotkin had sent stars to a Ukrainian Telegram channel that posts memes and was probably raising money for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
After his detention, the mathematician was twice placed under "carousel" administrative arrest on petty hooliganism protocols — for 15 and then 14 days. The second term expired on September 17.
That day Krasotkin was taken to the Moscow branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB), where a treason case was opened against him, according to Vot Tak's sources. Two days later the Meshchansky District Court ordered him held in pre-trial detention. On October 14 the Moscow City Court rejected an appeal against his arrest.
Vot Tak's sources described threats and violence against the mathematician. According to one of them, after his first administrative arrest FSB officers put a bag over Krasotkin's head, beat him and tortured him with electric shocks, and forced him to sing the song "Matushka-zemlya." He lost consciousness several times.
After his detention at the airport, a source said, he was forced to record confessions in Ukrainian, a language he barely knows.
Krasotkin holds a master's degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and worked as a mathematician at the Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. From the age of 16 he took part in the Russian Wikinews project, where he is listed as one of its administrators. In 2021 he published its millionth article. His grandmother is the Ukrainian children's poet and teacher Nadezhda Krasotkina.
Cases over Telegram stars have been known since the start of 2026. At that time, according to Ekho, they involved a charge of financing terrorism. In the summer the Telegram channel Tyuremny Advokat reported the first cases over paid reactions under the treason article.
The Memorial project supporting political prisoners, cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe, says security services have opened such cases even over reactions in non-political, news or personal channels, treating them as transfers to Ukrainian military units.
In September, rights activists from OVD-Info and Memorial sent an open letter to Telegram founder Pavel Durov. They asked him to make paid reactions anonymous by default or to add a separate privacy setting for them.