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On 8 April, Alexander Shestun, former head of the Serpukhov district near Moscow, declared a dry hunger strike. He reported this himself in a letter published by RusNews.
Since 30 March, Shestun had been on a regular hunger strike. He wrote that he stopped drinking water on 7 April, and the next day officially notified Federal Penitentiary Service staff that he was starting a dry hunger strike.
The politician is currently in the Federal Penitentiary Service hospital in Torzhok, a town in Tver Region, northwest of Moscow. Through his hunger strike, he is demanding:
- a long visit with his children, which was disrupted at Penal Colony No. 6 in Bezhetsk, a town in Tver Region;
- the provision of a list of appeals he has sent to supervisory bodies, with the dates they were sent;
- urgent medical assistance and official recognition that previous refusals of care were unlawful.
Shestun was told he had been brought to the hospital to go before a commission and that “we cannot treat you.” Meanwhile, three of his teeth have fallen out, and shards from another tooth are cutting his mouth and tongue, causing bleeding.
“Three front teeth were knocked out by staff of the Tver Region Federal Penitentiary Service. One tooth was knocked out by Lebedev, the head of remand prison No. 1, in 2021; I had a prosthetic put in on a pin, but staff at Penal Colony No. 6 in Bezhetsk knocked that out too, along with two others, when force was used against me on 1 December 2025,” the politician writes.
According to Shestun, he has lost seven kilogrammes during the hunger strike and has fainted twice, injuring his face. He also reminded readers that he has diabetes, “which increases the harm to my health.” He is refusing vitamin C with glucose.
This is not the first time Shestun has declared a hunger strike in protest against violations of his rights in detention. In December 2025, he slashed his wrists in a single occupancy cell.
The last time he went on hunger strike was in early March, at that time in Penal Colony No. 6 in Bezhetsk. Penitentiary staff disrupted his long family visit by transferring him to a punishment cell. It is not clear when he ended his previous hunger strike.
The Free 120 campaign, which advocates for the release of seriously ill political prisoners, has appealed to Tatyana Moskalkova, the federal human rights commissioner, Nadyezhda Yegorova, the Tver Region human rights commissioner, and journalist Yevgenia Merkachyova, who sits on the Human Rights Council. Free 120 is calling for a review of the conditions in which Shestun is being held and the medical care provided to him.
- Shestun has been imprisoned since 2018. In 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years in a penal colony on charges of fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code), bribery (part 6 of article 290), illegal business activity (article 289), and money laundering (subparagraph 'b' part 4 of article 174.1). Shestun denied all the charges and said his prosecution was politically motivated.
- Shortly before his arrest in 2018, the politician recorded a video message in which he spoke about threats from the head of Moscow Region, Andrey Vorobyov. The governor demanded that he ban a protest against the Lesnaya landfill and not stand for another term. Shestun also released an audio recording of a conversation with Ivan Tkachev, head of the FSB’s “K” directorate, Andrey Yarin, the head of the President’s domestic policy department, and Mikhail Kuznetsov, chief of staff of Moscow Region. In this recording, they tried to persuade Shestun to resign.
- In 2022, he was convicted in a new case: for insulting a judge (part 2 of article 297), insulting a representative of authority (article 319), and threatening in connection with the administration of justice (part 1 of article 296). In this case, Shestun admitted to the insult charges but not the threat. An additional six months was added to his sentence.