In August 2024, Leonid Melekhin, a small-business owner and opposition activist from the Russian city of Perm, arrived at a California border crossing for a scheduled appointment through the CBP One app. He hoped to win political asylum and eventually bring his wife and two children to the United States. Less than a year later, he was back in Russia and under arrest. On October 2, 2026, a Russian military court sentenced him to six years in prison.
An opposition activist in Perm
Melekhin was born on November 26, 1990. He ran a small business and took part in local political protests. Photographs place him at a demonstration in Perm in 2017; the following year, he discussed monitoring Russia’s presidential election. The New Yorker reconstructed aspects of his early activism through interviews with people who had worked with the local campaign organization of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Police detained Melekhin at a demonstration in support of Navalny in 2021. According to The New Yorker, officers tried to obtain statements from him about other opposition supporters. In 2023, he staged a one-man protest holding a sign demanding Navalny’s freedom and was detained again. Melekhin later said that, at a police station, one officer restrained his arms while another punched him in the stomach. He also reported threats that he would be forcibly conscripted into the Russian military. Those allegations have not been independently established.
Before leaving Russia, Melekhin displayed a banner on a bridge in Perm with a harsh message directed at President Vladimir Putin. Accounts differ on some details of the display, including whether a mannequin was involved. While making his way toward the United States, Melekhin asked fellow activist Yuri Bobrov to publish a photograph of the protest. That photograph later became part of the case against him in Russia.
Eight months waiting in Mexico
Melekhin traveled to Mexico in the winter of 2023–24. Rather than cross the border clandestinely, he waited about eight months for an appointment through CBP One, the system then used to schedule arrivals at official U.S. ports of entry. On August 15, 2024, he presented himself at the Calexico crossing in California. U.S. immigration authorities detained him.
He was initially held at the privately operated Imperial Regional Detention Facility in California. Former detainees later described him as hopeful during his first months there. He believed his record of political protest, previous detentions and fear of persecution in Russia would persuade an immigration judge to grant him protection.
Why the U.S. asylum claim failed
On December 19, 2024, Immigration Judge Ann Christina Perry denied his asylum application. Melekhin represented himself, without an attorney. Joshua Yaffa of The New Yorker reviewed a transcript of the judge’s oral decision. Perry found his testimony credible and described the supporting evidence as plausible, consistent and detailed. But she concluded that his political activities had been limited and that he had not sufficiently demonstrated a likelihood of persecution if returned to Russia.
Under U.S. asylum law, an applicant does not have to show that persecution is more likely than not. The legal standard of a well-founded fear can be met even when the probability is substantially lower; a 10 percent risk has been used as an illustration in U.S. case law. The judge nevertheless found that Melekhin had not met the applicable standard and ordered his removal.
The timing mattered. Melekhin had told the court that Russian security officers searched his family’s home after the banner photograph appeared online. In October 2024, Russian authorities placed him on the federal list of individuals associated with terrorism or extremism. He learned more about the criminal case against him only later, after the initial ruling. When the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the denial on June 11, 2025, its decision did not mention the Russian criminal proceedings. The New Yorker reported that it was unclear whether the appellate decision-makers had been given that information.
The U.S. ruling was not a finding that returning to Russia was safe. It was a determination that the evidence before the immigration court did not establish eligibility for asylum. Melekhin’s lack of legal representation and the apparent absence of the later criminal-case information from the appellate decision are central to understanding what happened.
Ten months in immigration detention
While his appeal was pending, Melekhin was transferred from Imperial to a detention facility in San Luis, Arizona. Relatives and fellow detainees told The New Yorker that the conditions were harder there and that he lost weight and became withdrawn. After the appeal failed, he was returned to Imperial as officials prepared to remove him.
Friends urged him to keep fighting, including by seeking federal judicial review and legal counsel. Bobrov raised money for an attorney. But communication with Melekhin was difficult. Other detainees described a man who had lost hope after months behind bars. He reportedly said that prison awaited him in Russia, yet he could no longer see a way forward through continued immigration detention.
Valery Kuznetsov, a Russian court-appointed lawyer who later represented Melekhin, said he had agreed to return despite knowing that he might be arrested. Friends viewed the decision differently: as one made by a person worn down by prolonged confinement. Publicly available records do not establish the precise legal form of his departure or all the circumstances surrounding it. Describing his return simply as voluntary would leave out that uncertainty.
Arrested on his return
Melekhin left U.S. immigration custody around July 22–23, 2025. He was detained in Moscow on July 24. The next day, a district court in Perm ordered him held pending trial. Journalists reported that officers identifying themselves as members of Russia’s Federal Security Service searched the apartment where his wife and children lived. The family learned of his return and arrest through news reports.
By then, Melekhin was already on the Russian financial-monitoring agency’s terrorism and extremism list. The public record does not establish every step in the chronology of the investigation and the wanted notice. What is clear is that he faced an active Russian prosecution by the time he returned.
A closed trial and a six-year sentence
The case reached the Central District Military Court in February 2026. Hearings on the merits began in Yekaterinburg on May 6. Prosecutors charged Melekhin under two provisions of Article 205.2 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which concerns public calls for terrorism and the justification of terrorism. One allegation related to the photograph of his protest banner published on Telegram; another concerned an online comment whose content was not publicly disclosed.
The proceedings were closed to the public at the request of prosecutor Maria Otradnova. On October 2, Judge Igor Solomko sentenced Melekhin to six years in a general-regime penal colony and imposed a further two-year ban on administering websites and online channels. Mediazona reported the sentence on October 5. A former lawyer said Melekhin had pleaded guilty, but the closed proceedings make it impossible for the public to assess the circumstances or full content of his statements.
A political prisoner, with his family still in Perm
On January 26, 2026, the Memorial political prisoners support project recognized Melekhin as a political prisoner. The organization considers the prosecution politically motivated and calls for his release and for the case to be dropped. Such recognition is an assessment of the use of criminal law against political expression and the severity of the response; it is not an endorsement of every statement the defendant may have made.
As of November 1, 2026, Memorial listed Melekhin as being held in Yekaterinburg’s SIZO-1 pretrial detention center while awaiting an appeal. His FACTUM.press profile has not yet been updated to reflect the October sentence and should be read alongside the newer court and human-rights reporting.
Melekhin left Russia alone. His wife and two children stayed in Perm while he sought a route to safety and, eventually, family reunification. Instead, he spent roughly ten months in American immigration detention, was returned to Russia and received a six-year prison sentence. His case illustrates the stakes of an asylum denial when new evidence of prosecution may not have been considered before a person is sent back to the country he fled.
Melekhin had supported Alexei Navalny. FACTUM.press has also covered the prosecution of Navalny’s lawyers and the case against journalist Antonina Favorskaya. Although the circumstances differ, these cases form part of the documented pressure on people connected with Russia’s opposition.