Moscow court orders arrest of journalist Yury Dud in terrorism case

Moscow’s Basmanny District Court has ordered the arrest in absentia of journalist and blogger Yury Dud in a criminal case involving public calls for terrorist activity, the press service of Moscow’s courts of general jurisdiction said.

Dud has interviewed a wide range of public figures, including Kremlin critics, and his documentaries have addressed subjects including HIV in Russia, the Beslan school siege and the Soviet Gulag system. His channel has become one of the largest Russian-language interview and documentary platforms on YouTube.

The court ordered Dud to be held in pretrial detention for two months, starting from the date of his transfer to Russian law enforcement authorities in the event of his extradition to Russia, or from the date of his detention on Russian territory.

The charge against Dud under Part 2 of Article 205.2 of Russia’s Criminal Code carries a prison sentence of between five and seven years.

“The Basmanny District Court of Moscow on September 29, 2026, imposed on Dud Yury Alexandrovich a preventive measure in the form of detention for a period of two months from the moment of his transfer to law enforcement authorities of the Russian Federation in the event of his extradition to the territory of the Russian Federation, or from the moment of his detention on the territory of Russia. Dud Y. A. is accused of committing a crime under Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (calls for terrorist activity using the internet),” the court’s press service said.

The current case stems from an interview Dud published in April 2026 with Denis Kapustin, the commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, a unit fighting alongside Ukrainian forces that Russia has designated as a terrorist organization. The interview, which ran for nearly five hours, was published on Dud’s YouTube channel on April 2.

In April 2026, Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin ordered a legal assessment of Dud’s actions, alleging that his material promoted violent acts on the basis of nationality. The move followed the publication of the interview with Kapustin, who had been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in Russia for crimes against public security and state authority.

In November last year, a magistrate’s court at Moscow’s Judicial District No. 359 sentenced Dud in absentia to one year and 10 months in a general-regime penal colony after finding him guilty of failing to comply with the obligations imposed on foreign agents.

Dud was arrested in absentia and placed on an interstate wanted list in connection with that case, which was opened on the basis of materials from an investigation conducted by the Moscow prosecutor’s office. Authorities established that the 39-year-old journalist had been fined twice within a year for violating the rules governing the activities of foreign agents under Part 4 of Article 19.34 of Russia’s Code of Administrative Offences. Despite this, he continued to distribute materials through a messaging platform without the required foreign-agent label.

Russia’s Justice Ministry added Dud to its register of foreign agents in 2022. In 2024, he stopped using the foreign-agent designation on his YouTube channel.

On September 23, Russia’s financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring, added Dud to its register of “terrorists and extremists.” The listing indicated that he was under criminal investigation.

Dud, 39, is one of Russia’s best-known independent journalists and video bloggers. He began his career as a sports journalist and later served as editor-in-chief of the sports website Sports.ru. He gained widespread recognition after launching his YouTube channel, vDud, in 2017. The channel features long-form interviews with prominent figures from politics, culture, business, journalism, sports and entertainment, as well as documentary films on social and political issues. It has more than 10 million subscribers.

By Tamilla Hasanova