Dmitry Ivanov was a student at Moscow State University. He is also the founder of the Telegram channel Protest MSU, and an activist who has been fighting for the rights of Russian students for over five years.
In March 2023, he was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for posting “fake news” about the Russian army on social media. We spoke to Dmitry’s friends and colleagues about how he became involved in political activism and how he remains courageous even behind bars.
Even in school, Dmitry expressed his disagreement with the regulations. His friend, Evgenia (we have changed her name for security reasons), recalls that he would often argue with teachers, especially the history teacher, when their opinions didn’t align. He would also speak out against state-mandated school uniforms, considering the policy a relic of the past.
“It’s hard to say when I started getting into politics. Maybe around 2014. Events that were happening at the time were hard to ignore, even if you were 15 like I was back then,” Dmitry Ivanov shared with The Insider.
On 26 March 2017, Dmitry, still a high school student at the time, attended his first street protest as part of an anti-corruption rally organized by Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. Dmitry was accompanied by a friend from school who had already graduated.
At his very first protest, Dmitry was detained. He was taken to the juvenile department of a police station and reprimanded by the officers. Later, he was let off with a warning and released into the custody of his mother.
“That was the first time he experienced injustice, the lawlessness unfolding right in front of him. People from the crowd were being detained for no reason. It deeply struck him. After that protest, his interest in politics began to grow”, says Evgenia.
In 2017, Dmitry was admitted to Moscow State University (MSU), the most prestigious university in Russia. As his father is an MSU alumnus, Dmitry was inspired to follow in his footsteps. He studied at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics and starting from his second year, worked at the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
According to Evgenia, in January 2020, after completing the first semester of his third year, Dmitry took academic leave due to his activism.
Dmitry returned to his studies before the end of his academic leave. On August 6, the court delivered a verdict in the New Greatness case, so he resumed his classes in September.
“I had the feeling that he was doing well academically. He occasionally had some arrear exams and other difficulties as a result of his activism, but he took care of them relatively easily. He was well-liked by his department, which is closely connected to the institute where he used to work,” says Mikhail Lobanov, a Russian opposition politician and an associate professor at Moscow State University. “He could have continued to develop professionally. I hope when he is released, he will graduate successfully and then pursue both his professional and political interests freely.”
According to Evgeniya, Dmitry had good relationships with his professors. He also got along with his fellow students, although they weren’t close.
The first Telegram channel Protest MSU was created in the spring of 2018. At that time, proactive students and faculty members of MSU were engaged in a struggle against the establishment of a fan zone for the FIFA World Cup right outside the main university building.
Mikhail Lobanov cites two reasons for the decision to place the fan zone near MSU: the authorities wanted to avoid crowds of up to 250,000 people gathering near the Kremlin, while the World Cup’s sponsors wanted to capture the iconic image of Moscow’s Sparrow Hills, which is where MSU is located.
The fan zone was planned to be established next to a closed-off entrance to the university’s main building. At that time, exams were taking place, so noise from the fans would have disrupted the work of three faculties and interfered with students in the nearby dormitory. Additionally, the fans, who would gather in crowds near bus stops, hindered the students’ normal commute to the university. Later, fences were installed around the building, so some fans tried to break into the fan zone via MSU territory.
On May 22, the campaign against the fan zone concluded with a final event called the Festival for the Fans’ Festival Relocation. It featured musicians and a march from MSU building to the observation platform on Sparrow Hills. However, the participants faced challenges as university halls were suddenly closed for cleaning, construction tape hindered their movement, and a police van was brought into the university’s courtyard.
On the day of the Festival for the Fans’ Festival Relocation, uniformed and plainclothes police officers are spotted in the lower courtyard of the main MSU building near the local police station. Residents of the dormitory recalled seeing a police van nearby.
“During the march, we saw a young man who was emphatically suggesting to chant anti-Putin slogans, adapted against [MSU Rector Viktor] Sadovnichy. I approached him and said: ’Look, everything [you are saying] is correct, but as you can see for yourself, some people are not catching on, they don’t get it,’” says Mikhail Lobanov.
This was the first event that Dmitry covered in Protest MSU. It didn’t attract a lot of attention.
After the launch of Protest MSU, Dmitry became involved with the activist community. However, this attracted police attention, so Ivanov was targeted at rallies, held at police stations, and fined several times. It’s worth noting that Dmitry was not organizing the protests but covering them for his channel.
On 16 December 2018, Dmitry lost access to the first Protest MSU. He was taking photos at a protest against political violence on Lubyanka Square — home to the headquarters of Russia’s infamous Federal Security Service (FSB). Some of his photos included police captain Alexey Okopny, a senior detective at the Sixth Department of Moscow’s Centre for Combating Extremism.
Dmitry was detained and placed in a separate police van where he encountered Okopny, two employees of the Centre for Combating Extremism (colloquially known as “eshniks”), and several police officers. Dmitry’s account of the threats made in that van and the reveal of Dmitry’s identity marked the beginning of a new Protest MSU channel, which exists to this day.
“Of course, this was not the first time I had encountered lawlessness, but I had only seen such hell before on the pages of Novaya Gazeta (one of Russia’s oldest and most renowned newspapers — Ed.) and in the articles of Mediazona (a prominent media outlet which focuses on Russian prison system and human rights violations — Ed.). A police officer in a mask and a bulletproof vest entered the van with a taser. I had already mentally prepared myself for an electric shock, but instead I received a smack on the back of the head. Then another, and another, and several more. They know how to hit you so hard your head will ring, but without a trace of bruising. He didn’t use the taser after all — he just waved it in front of me and flicked it on and off. Okopny was hitting my face with the phone and saying he was going to ‘take me to the basement of the nearby building, where no one ever comes back from.’ The other one blatantly stated that he would ‘beat the shit out of me so badly that I would pass out’. Having exhausted the threats of physical violence they moved on to an even nastier subject. ‘Do you have any condoms?’ Okopny asked the cop with the taser. ‘Put it on your baton, we’ll warm him up in there. Or maybe you already are?” writes Ivanov in his channel.
In the same post, Dmitry writes that the police officers limited themselves to threats. After 40 minutes of going through Dmitry’s belongings, officers failed to obtain the password to his phone and took him to the van with other detainees. ’’And then it was business as usual — getting to a police department, waiting for 3 hours, having identical reports, and getting copy-pasted charges of violating article 20.2 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses, (violating the established procedure for arranging or conducting rallies — Ed.)" recounts Dmitry in the channel.
The story with Okopny’s threats spread through the media, and more activists started following Ivanov. In his Telegram channel, he often brought attention to the students’ fight against the violation of their rights. Ivanov covered student protests, called for signing of open letters and petitions, encouraged attending rallies, and urged everyone to stay brave.
Below are just a few instances of him assisting fellow students:
As Dmitry’s friend Nikita Zaitsev believes, the main focus of his activism was supporting political prisoners. Before being jailed, Ivanov managed to cover several high-profile political cases, such as the New Greatness case, the cases of the “Network” and the “Booth”, as well as supporting Azat Miftakhov — a mathematician and a graduate student of MSU who was framed, arrested, and tortured by the government for his anarchist political views.
“Because of his humanism and compassion, he greatly empathized with imprisoned politicians and activists. He believed that all political prisoners must be released and was dedicated to this cause,” says Nikita Zaytsev, who currently administers Protest MSU.
On March 15, 2018, just a few days prior to the presidential elections, law enforcement officers arrested ten young individuals, two of whom, Vyacheslav Kryukov and Maria Dubovik, were students. They were all charged with "creating and participating in an extremist organization. One of the defendants, Ruslan Kostylenkov, was brutally tortured. Almost all of the accused were unemployed at the time of their arrest. In terms of education, they were veterinarians, lawyers, and engineers.
According to the interrogation protocols, the defendants met each other in Telegram chat groups. They had several meetings in cafes and McDonald’s restaurants, where they discussed creating an organization. During one of the meetings, they adopted the charter of the New Greatness movement, which contained provisions about their organization actively participating in future “revolutionary actions.”
A person named Ruslan D. was also present in these meetings: in fact, he was the one to suggest meeting regularly. The defendants’ lawyers, the defendants themselves, journalists, and human rights defenders all believe that Ruslan D. is actually Rodion Zelinsky, a citizen of Moldova and an agent of a law enforcement agency, presumably, the FSB. According to some reports, he was one of the first to propose the creation of a political opposition party.
On August 6, 2020, the court found the defendants in the New Greatness case guilty of creating an extremist organization.
Dmitry covered the case in detail, announcing when the hearings were to take place, providing text-based coverage of several court sessions, and informing his readers about upcoming rallies in support of the detainees.
On the day of the verdict announcement, Dmitry was in a detention center after being arrested at yet another protest. However, his friends took over Protest MSU and provided coverage of the case even when Dmitry himself didn’t have access to it.
As a result of their protest against the verdict in the New Greatness case, activists Olga Misik, Ivan Vorobyevsky, and Igor Basharimov were charged with vandalism. According to the prosecution’s version of events, on the night of August 8, 2020, the activists splashed red paint on the guard booth near the building of the General Prosecutor’s Office in Moscow. Olga Misik, who was a close friend of Dmitry, was studying journalism at Moscow State University at the time.
Ivanov covered the case and supported the arrested activists. On November 1, 2020, Dmitry was detained while reporting from the scene of a picket near the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Azat was detained on February 1, 2019, on charges of manufacturing explosive substances. He was not officially arrested but was illegally held in custody and subjected to torture. Security forces beat him and threatened him with sexual assault using an electric screwdriver.
Miftakhov did not admit his guilt. He was officially arrested and sent to a temporary detention facility (IVS), but at trial, the court did not find evidence of Miftakhov’s guilt, so he was cleared of all charges and released.
Upon leaving the detention center, Miftakhov was immediately detained again and transferred to another IVS. This time, he was being charged with vandalizing one of the offices of the governing Russian party over a year ago. The accusation was based on the testimony of an anonymous witness: according to them, Miftakhov threw a ыmoke grenade through the window on. The witness claimed that they did not report it earlier because their phone had run out of battery.
The only evidence of Miftakhov’s guilt was a ticket to Belarus. On the day of the ‘purchase’, Azat was in the temporary detention center without access to the Internet. The ticket was considered a sufficient reason to detain Miftakhov.
On January 11, 2021, the court found Azat guilty of hooliganism and he was sentenced to six years in prison.
Dmitry organized rallies in support of Azat. On January 18th, 2021, he was detained at one of them.
“In 2019, I organized a gathering in support of Azat Miftakhov, a postgraduate from the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University. He was arrested, tortured, and charged with terrorism. When he didn’t confess, they dropped the accusations and immediately implicated him in some old fabricated hooliganism case. It’s abhorrent. Moreover, he was studying with me at Moscow State University at another faculty. I felt it was important for the university community to respond, so we gathered near the Lomonosov monument by the main building. Everything went relatively well, but myself and two other people were detained: activist Konstantin Kotov, who later faced criminal charges for breaking the ‘Dadin’s article’, and Nikita Zaitsev,” said Dmitry Ivanov in an interview with The Insider.
Dmitry arrived at MSU for his penultimate exam on April 28, and he was detained upon leaving the faculty. In his channel, he wrote, “They accuse me of organizing an illegal rally based on one of the posts on this channel.” The next day, he was arrested for 10 days “for organizing a rally with anti-war stickers.” He served his term at a detention center and was supposed to be released on May 8.
“When we arrived to meet him, we saw through the fence that right at the exit, where those who had served their administrative arrest term were being released, there was already a police ’stakan’ (a separate compartment for detainees inside a police van — Ed.). We didn’t witness the actual process of him being taken and put into the car because we were constantly being driven away from the fence. But we knew it was him when the car passed by us — I noticed his backpack inside the van,” recalls Dmitry’s friend, Evgeniya.
On May 9, Dmitry was charged with repeated violation of the established procedure of conducting rallies: he shared a post from Alexey Navalny’s channel calling for participation in protests against the war on March 6. Ivanov was sentenced to 25 days of arrest. Dmitry missed the defense of his thesis, which was supposed to take place on June 1, while he was imprisoned until June 2.
“He requested a reduction in his sentence by just one day, but the request was denied. Then he was transferred to Mnevniki prison. While there, he continued working on his thesis and would pass it to us through his lawyer so that we could have it signed by the rector. It’s truly a testament to his genius to write a programming thesis by hand on paper while sitting in a prison cell,” shares Evgeniya.
On the morning of June 2, Dmitry Ivanov’s relatives were subjected to police searches and taken to the Investigative Committee as witnesses. Dmitry himself was brought there around 12:00 PM and kept hidden in the car until 9:00 PM.
On June 3, the Presnensky District Court of Moscow returned Dmitry to a detention center for two months on charges related to “spreading misinformation” about the Russian military. The charges were based on his posts about “attacks by Russia on the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, an unnamed city in Ukraine, losses of Russian aviation in Ukraine, and military crimes in Bucha and Irpin.” Additionally, he was charged for a post where he referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine not as a “special military operation,” but as a “war,” which is punishable by law.
“He is an anti-Russian fascist!” “He defends all political rejects of society!” “He has been involved in financial manipulations!” “He hates people who do not share his liberal views.” These were the words used by Associate Professor Lyudmila Grigoryeva to describe Dmitry in her “report.” It is worth noting that she has never met Dmitry.
Since then, Dmitry’s pretrial detention has been repeatedly extended by the court, but that didn’t deter him from activism. For instance, during the latest court hearing on January 18, he joined a protest demanding the release of Alexei Navalny, which was happening at the time. After the hearing, Dmitry was attacked by the convoy, who struck him with a baton on his head and ribs.
“We are organizing a campaign so that Dima is not forgotten. We understand that we may not achieve his release, but we will bring public attention to his case,” shared one of the authors of the Prison MSU channel, who chose to remain anonymous.
Prison MSU collected letters of support for Dmitry during his appeal. At that time, individuals such as Elena Panfilova, the Executive Director of the Russian chapter of Transparency International, Grigory Yudin, a renowned sociologist and political scientist, Dmitry Muratov, the Editor-in-Chief of Novaya Gazeta, and many others vouched for Dmitry.
In the podcast Letters on the Prison MSU channel, Dmitry’s friends read his letters from the pre-trial detention center, in which Dmitry shares his experiences.
The Protest MSU channel did not have any posts from June 1 to August 31 when Dmitry’s friend, Nikita Zaytsev, began creating content for the channel. He is now continuing Dmitry Ivanov’s work. Nikita says, “I started running the channel about four months after discussing it with Dmitry. By that time, I was already abroad and not facing political persecution in Russia, so I decided to support Dmitry in this way.”
After Ivanov’s arrest, there were protests in his support. For instance, a graduate of MSU attended the graduation ceremony wearing a t-shirt with writing advocating for Dmitry’ release. The young woman was detained and taken to the police station for questioning, but was later let off with a warning.
On the evening of July 3, an event where people wrote letters to Dmitry took place in Moscow. At some point SERB activists and police officers crashed the meeting. Similar gatherings were organized at other venues, also being crashed by activists and police.
On Dmitry’s birthday, August 5, a rally in his support took place in Tbilisi. Protests of small groups of people also happened in Russia, such as the one that occurred on August 6 at Manezhnaya Square in Moscow.
Ivanov receives messages from his supporters through his lawyer, Maria Eismont.
“Many people reach out to me — including Ukrainians. For example, a woman that I didn’t know contacted me, though we weren’t even friends on social networks. She has four children who had to hide from bombings in a basement. But despite that, she read about Dmitry and wrote in the letter, ‘How is this possible, how can this be happening to this boy, this young man, we worry about him so much.’ I printed it out and brought it to Dmitry. He wrote a response. I am the one who exchanges messages with her, but she occasionally asks about how he’s doing. In that sense, maybe as long as he lives, not everyone [in Russia] is damned,” shares Eismont.
“I appreciate how kind and peaceful our people are. taking to the streets with flowers and signs, and even when they are detained, they never lose their dignity. Our country holds many wonderful things, while the negatives are concentrated in the Kremlin and on Lubyanka Square. The leadership will inevitably change, and I believe it will happen fairly soon. What we are doing is simply moving closer to the inevitable,” Dmitry for the Insider.