Prague – RFERL, June 05, 2026
In 2021, the year before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mikhail Loshchinin traveled to his native Russia by motorcycle, later returning to his home in western Europe without incident.
Last summer, he decided to do it again — this time to see his father , who had suffered a heart attack, for what he feared might be the last time.
But Loshchinin, 48, has not seen his father: He was detained shortly after crossing into Russia from Latvia, held in various locations — from a hotel to a holding pen where he says he was tortured — and tried on a treason charge. On June 2, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison, according to relatives and media reports.
The fate of Loshchinin, a Belgian and Russian citizen who has lived in the European Union since 1999 — the same year President Vladimir Putin first came to power as prime minister — provides a grim look at the relentless and often arbitrary oppression the Russian state is meting out amid the all-out war against Ukraine, now in its fifth year.
At a closed-door trial, a court in the northwestern city of Pskov found Loshchinin guilty of “financing representatives of a foreign state recognized as an adversary of the Russian Federation,” Russian news channels on Telegram reported. The evidence: a single instance in which he sent a Ukrainian ex-girlfriend the equivalent of about $245.
