Russian woman tortured and charged with treason for contact with alleged Ukrainian agent

A woman from Russia’s southwestern Kursk region has been arrested and charged with treason for corresponding with an alleged Ukrainian intelligence agent based in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, human rights organisation Memorial reported on Tuesday.

According to Russian human rights organisation Memorial, Svetlana Tolkachova, 43, has been in pretrial detention in the city of Kursk since 25 December over her links to Alexey Lebedev, a volunteer from Tbilisi.

Tolkachova was first detained in May so that investigators could establish whether there had been “illegal activity relating to funding terrorism”, Memorial said, adding that she was subsequently placed in administrative custody for 12 days for being insubordinate to a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer.

Memorial also said that Tolkachova had been tortured by FSB officers using electrical shocks to extract a confession from her, demanding she sign a statement, which she ultimately did without having read it.

The FSB officers used Tolkachova’s messages to Lebedev, which they managed to extract from her phone, as the basis for their case against her, Memorial said, adding that images of a swastika and the emblem of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which has been deemed a “terrorist organisation” in Russia, appeared on the phone after it was confiscated.

Tolkacheva was released on 27 May, at which point the security forces began a seven-month surveillance operation, according to Memorial, before detaining her and charging her with treason in December.

According to Memorial, Tolkacheva has donated money to Volunteers Tbilisi, an organisation that helps Ukrainian refugees in Georgia access medical care and temporary housing, since 2022. Though Tolkacheva had intended to move to Georgia herself, a cancer diagnosis forced her to cancel her plans, Memorial added.