The Moscow City Court has begun hearing the case of Ivan Semenikhin, an operative of the Interior Ministry's Main Criminal Investigation Department, according to Mediazona. After a year and a half of investigation, he was charged with high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) and unlawful access to computer information with grave consequences (Part 4 of Article 272).
Semenikhin was detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center in February 2025. The details of the case are unknown; hearings are held behind closed doors.
As the BBC Russian Service reported, Semenikhin had for many years investigated crimes against children in cooperation with foreign colleagues. In 2020, these contacts helped the operative rescue a kidnapped seven-year-old boy from the Vladimir region — the child was found alive and the kidnapper was detained.
Whether the treason charges are linked to Semenikhin's contacts with foreign law enforcement is unknown. The operative's lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, suggested that the Federal Security Service (FSB) could have retrospectively regarded these contacts as espionage or disclosure of state secrets.