Valery Kachin, a scientist convicted of “treason,” has declared a dry hunger strike following violence in the pre-trial detention centre.

Valery Kachin, a geodesist convicted of “treason” and sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony (Article 275 of the Criminal Code), has declared a dry hunger strike in SIZO-1, Udmurtia’s pre-trial detention centre. According to him, he refused both food and water following physical violence and mistreatment by the detention staff. First Department reports this.

Kachin said that he is kept in solitary confinement almost continuously. At first he was given a seven-day term, then another ten days, and then twice for 15 days. According to the scientist, staff at the pre-trial centre also force him to raise and lower a heavy bed by himself, conduct night checks, and take away his belongings.

On the morning of 21 October, after an altercation with staff, Kachin said he was thrown to the floor. He hit his face, and was left with abrasions on his elbows and knees. After this, the scientist began a dry hunger strike. “First Department” writes that at a height of 182 centimetres Kachin currently weighs about 60 kilograms.

• Kachin was detained in Birobidzhan, a city in the Russian Far East, in autumn 2022 and sent to Moscow’s Lefortovo pre-trial detention centre. Before his arrest, he worked as a geodesist in the Birobidzhan mayor’s office and at the Bastak nature reserve. On social media he supported Ukraine, Alexei Navalny and the protests in Belarus. Kachin himself believed his prosecution was connected, among other things, to his position on the war.
• In January 2025, a court in Birobidzhan sentenced Kachin to 14 years in a high-security penal colony. According to the FSB’s version, Kachin provided a representative of the Ukrainian special services with information on critically important infrastructure facilities in the Jewish Autonomous Region.
• In September 2025, Kachin had already declared a dry hunger strike after more than two months in solitary confinement in Penal Colony No. 8 “Khokhryaki.” Later he said that during this hunger strike he lost weight down to just 53 kilograms, and that his heart and kidneys suffered most.