Activist Pavel Krisevich was not released after serving 15 days of administrative detention on charges of petty hooliganism. The Insider reported this, citing people close to Krisevich. They refer to an officer on duty at a special detention facility in Istra, near Moscow, who said that Krisevich is being held at that facility, from which he was supposed to be released on December 13.
Relatives of the activist say that at first they were told Krisevich was not there, but his whereabouts were eventually clarified “after a scandal.” The reason why Krisevich remains in the detention facility is still unclear; it is assumed that he may have been re-arrested under another administrative charge. This practice is often referred to as a “carousel arrest,” when similar short-term detentions follow one after another.
On Saturday evening, when his detention term expired, Krisevich was taken to a police station to sign a warning notice. He himself reported this, saying that he would be released afterward. However, he has not been in contact since then.
At the end of November, Krisevich was arrested allegedly for using obscene language in a public place. According to his relatives, he was in fact trying to conduct a photo shoot in a cowboy costume on a rocket monument in Istra, near Moscow. Krisevich told his relatives that the photos were meant to reference Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).
In 2022, Krisevich was sentenced to five years in prison over a protest action on Red Square: the activist fired two blank shots into the air and then pointed the barrel of a deactivated pistol at himself, simulating suicide. According to Krisevich, the action was held in support of political prisoners. He was found guilty of hooliganism involving the use of a weapon. At the end of January this year, he was released from a penal colony in St. Petersburg. Since then, he has already been detained several times on administrative charges. On November 7, 2025, Russia’s Ministry of Justice added Pavel Krisevich to the register of “foreign agents.”
