Nikita Zhuravel's relatives expressed fears for his life.
The family of former Volgograd student Nikita Zhuravel has not received letters from him for three months, and is therefore worried about his health and life.
As "Caucasian Knot" reported in April 2025, the Third Court of Appeals, at an off-site hearing in the Volgograd Regional Court, upheld Nikita Zhuravel's sentence in the treason case. On December 3, it became known that Zhuravel was transferred to the Moscow pre-trial detention center "Matrosskaya Tishina" pending a hearing of the cassation appeal in the treason case in the Supreme Court of Russia. On December 4, the Supreme Court of Russia refused to change Zhuravel's sentence.
On February 27, 2024, a court in Grozny sentenced Nikita Zhuravel to 3.5 years in prison, finding him guilty of violating the right to religion and hooliganism for burning the Koran. In October 2024, the Prosecutor General's Office announced a new case against Zhuravel, alleging treason. Several weeks later, the convicted man was transferred from Chechnya to Volgograd, where the case was subsequently heard. The voluntariness of Zhuravel's testimony regarding treason remains in question, but human rights activists noted that the closed nature of the trial makes it impossible to hear his statements. On November 25, 2024, a court in Volgograd sentenced Zhuravel to 13.5 years in prison on charges of treason (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code). Taking into account the remaining sentence for the Koran-burning case, the court sentenced him to 14 years in prison.
Nikita Zhuravel's disappearance during transport was revealed in a letter from Stavropol lawyer Andrei Sabinin to Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council. Merkacheva published the document on her Telegram channel on the evening of March 25.
According to the lawyer, his relatives have not received any news from the convicted man since December 24, the day on which they received Zhuravel's last letter, which was sent from Ulyanovsk.
“From that time until today, neither Zhuravel’s family nor his lawyer have known his whereabouts or fate. My family and I are worried about Nikita’s life and health, especially since there is no evidence that he is alive,” Sabinin said in a plea for help in finding the convicted man.
Commenting on the lawyer’s message, Merkacheva expressed hope that Nikita Zhuravel is alive. She recalled that the law obliges pretrial detention centers to inform the relatives of convicted persons where they are being sent to serve their sentence, and the receiving penal colony must notify them of the convicted person’s arrival at the place of punishment within ten days.
The HRC member described Zhuravel’s case as a “tragic story” and recalled that he was beaten in the pretrial detention center, without specifying where or with whose participation.
On September 25, 2023, Ramzan Kadyrov published a video of his son Adam beating Zhuravel in a pretrial detention center. The head of Chechnya praised his son for this act, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "The beating of Nikita Zhuravel: why the Kadyrovites needed to publish the video." After beating Zhuravel, Adam Kadyrov began receiving numerous awards and titles - among the first were the title of Hero of Chechnya and the highest state awards of Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. On December 30, 2025, he received from his father the Akhmat Kadyrov Memorial Medal "For Contribution to Ensuring the Security, Stability, and Prosperity of the Motherland." Commenting on his son's awards, Kadyrov Sr. stated that they were all received for specific achievements.
Zhuravel has been in incommunicado for three months now—this is how international law characterizes "the deliberate creation of a situation of uncertainty for the family and the use of isolation itself as punishment," the Slovo Zashchity project notes.
"The number of people in incommunicado in Russia today is unknown: there is no information about them, and they themselves have no access to contact with loved ones. Often, human rights activists' lists include the person's first name, last name, year of birth, and last place seen. Their subsequent fate is unknown," the project's March 24 publication notes.
Transfers from pretrial detention centers to penal colonies "have long been a legal Russian-Soviet incommunicado," the human rights activists noted.
“The transfer can last a week, a month, or two, and no information about the person being transferred is provided. At any stage of detention, arrest, or sentence, much depends on the specific people making the decision—the investigator, the censor. They can close the window to the outside world in a second, and they'll find a reason,” the article explains.