Law enforcement officers posing as Meduza journalists visited Karelian activist Andrei Litvin. They examined contacts in his phone and laptop and confiscated the Ukrainian flag, which Litvin carried on the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Stalinism in Sandarmokh. The incident was reported on August 25 by From Karelia with Freedom Telegram channel.
Andrei Litvin, an activist from Petrozavodsk, told the From Karelia with Freedom project that the day before he received a phone call from a stranger who introduced himself as a journalist from the Meduza publication. He asked for a meeting seeking help in finding Sandarmokh, an execution site during Stalin’s Great Terror. They arranged to meet at Litvin’s workplace. According to the activist, the visitors, three men in plain clothes, identified themselves as FSB officers.
They drove him to the FSB office, making a stop at the activist's home, where they seized his laptop, cell phone, Ukrainian flag, and vyshyvanka (an embroidered shirt, an element of Ukrainian national costume). In the office, they examined Litvin's equipment, bringing up the names of Karelian journalists Natalia Sevets-Yermolina, Georgy Chentemirov, and Gleb Yarovoy in their conversation.
The activist was released without being formally charged. They returned his embroidered shirt and the phone along with the laptop with the words: "We have upgraded it for you". Litvin was left with an implicit message to stop his civil activity.
Andrei Litvin has been participating in actions against the war in Ukraine and Syria since 2016. He supported historian Yuri Dmitriev, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually molesting his adopted daughter, the charges denied by Dmitriev as an effort to discredit his work. It was Dmitriev who discovered the Sandarmokh execution site in Karelia.
