Andrei Zykov

Resident of St. Petersburg, left Russia. He lived in China and sold vape liquids. Blogger Ilya Varlamov claims that one of the reasons for the prosecution was a post in which Zykov wrote that he had sent a "batch of poison" to Russia. A case under one of the extremist articles was brought against the businessman no later than May 2023, when he was included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring. Later it became known that he was accused of spreading deliberately false information about the Russian Armed Forces (because of posts about killing Ukrainian civilians and shelling civilian infrastructure), calls for terrorism and extremism (because of calls to kill Russian servicemen and strike Russian territory) and incitement to hatred with the threat of violence. Zykov left for the United States, where he sought political asylum. As of February 2026, he was in U.S. immigration detention. In March 2026, his case came before the 2nd Western District Military Court. On 26 March, Zykov was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison.