Activist who ran project commemorating political repression victims disappears in Russia after being detained

Andrei Shalayev, the founder of Immortal Barracks, a Russian project to remember victims of political repression, has disappeared after being detained in Tver on 19 October.

Source: Latvia-based Russian media outlet Meduza, citing Immortal Barracks and OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights media project

Details: On 19 October, Shalayev told OVD-Info he had been detained at a railway station in Tver while waiting in a café for a train. He said a detention report was being drawn up on him for appearing in public in a state of intoxication (Articles 20 and 21 of Russia's Code of Administrative Offences).

The last contact anyone had with him was on the evening of that same day.

On the afternoon of 19 October, Shalayev had been showing some French journalists around firing ranges in Tver where mass executions took place.

Quote from the Immortal Barracks project: "We do not know Andrei's whereabouts at the moment. His phone number is unavailable. All the police departments, temporary detention centres, the special reception centre, the FSB, the Investigative Committee and others have told Andrei's lawyer and father that no such man has been brought there. We have been unable to get through to any medical institutions; no one answers the phone."

Update: Novaya Gazeta Europe later reported, citing RusNews and the Sova (Owl) search and rescue unit, that Shalayev has been found.

RusNews says that Shalayev was released two days after he was detained and that he is no longer in Tver. No information was given about where Shalayev was and how he was found.

Note: Immortal Barracks is a community project, set up in 2015, that collects documents, photographs and memories of victims of political repressions in the USSR.

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