Bogdan Yakimenko (Max Vertzinsky)

Bogdan was detained after a fight with a group of neo-Nazis on 5 January 2020 in Moscow together with another defendant Mikhail Ivanov. On 6 January 2020, officers of the Centre "E" and FSB, including Alexey Okopny, arrived at the police department; according to the detainees, they exerted pressure and threats, in an attempt to coerce cooperation. The criminal case was initiated under part 2 of article 213 and paragraph "b" part 2 of article 115 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. One of the attacking neo-Nazis became a victim in the case. On 29 June 2023 Basmanny Court sentenced Yakimenko to 4 years of correctional labour, taking into account his previous stay in the pre-trial detention centre and under house arrest. This verdict was the second: the first verdict, under which the anti-fascists were sentenced to actual imprisonment terms, was overturned by the Moscow City Court and sent back for retrial in April 2022. During the three years that the case has been under consideration, the anti-fascists were under house arrest for a year, then under a recognisance not to leave, and after the first verdict they spent eight months in the pre-trial detention centre.

The defendant is known among anti-fascists under the pseudonym Max Vertzinsky. At the time of his arrest, he was a first-year student at the Faculty of Law of the South Federal University, ran the "Skinheads R.A.S.H" group on VKontakte and was the creator of the non-commercial anti-fascist clothing merchandise "Antifa United". The defendant himself did not use any weapons during the fight in Moscow, he links the attention from the Centre "E" and the FSB to his own anti-fascist activism.

On 5 June 2024, he was detained in Rostov-on-Don on the case of creating an extremist community and taken to Moscow. Telegram channel "Antifa ru" wrote that Yakimenko was subjected to electric shock torture, with demands that he refuse legal counsel and avoid contact with human rights defenders. On 10 June, Yakimenko was sent to the pre-trial detention centre. Later it was reported that he was also charged with hooliganism, but details remain unknown.

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