Illustrative image. Photo: tizgin.kz.
Twenty-five-year-old IT developer Aleksandr Kachkurkin was deported from Kazakhstan to Russia, where he was detained on the plane upon arrival and arrested in a criminal case on charges of treason. The human rights project Pervy Otdel reported the case.
Kachkurkin was born and raised in Crimea and received a Russian passport in 2014 at age 14. He later moved to Kazakhstan for political reasons. In recent years he lived in Almaty, working as a DevOps engineer and developer. His clients included the American company OpenAI.
On January 28, Kachkurkin was brought to administrative responsibility on two counts at once — for crossing the street in the wrong place and for smoking a hookah in a non-designated indoor area. Human rights advocates say both reports were fabricated. After they were issued, police petitioned a court to deport Kachkurkin “for showing disrespect to the laws and sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan.”
The entire process — from the filing of reports to deportation — took several hours, whereas such procedures usually last weeks or months. Kachkurkin was urgently sent to Russia. Immediately after landing, he was detained on the plane and taken to court, which ordered him held in custody.
In Russia, he is accused of treason for money transfers to Ukraine. Under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code, he faces 12 to 20 years in prison or life imprisonment.
Several days earlier, on January 30, it also became known that Kazakhstan intends to deport Chechen activist Mansur Movlayev to Russia; he is currently in a pretrial detention center in Almaty. In December last year, the republic’s authorities denied him refugee status.
Movlayev is known for sharp criticism of Chechnya’s head Ramzan Kadyrov and for speaking out against human rights violations and political repression in the republic. He spent several years in a Russian prison on drug trafficking charges. After his release, he left the country, first staying in Kyrgyzstan and then in Kazakhstan, where he was detained in May 2025 at Russia’s request. In Russia, he has been placed on a federal wanted list on charges of financing extremism.
