Crimean-born Oleksandr Kachkurkin, who had been living in Almaty in recent years, was deported from Kazakhstan and arrested on charges of treason upon his arrival in Russia. The human rights project Perviy Otdel (lit. “Department One”) reported on Kachkurkin’s deportation and the circumstances of his arrest.
Kachkurkin is a Ukrainian citizen, born and raised in Crimea. After the peninsula’s annexation in 2014, he was forced to accept Russian citizenship. For political reasons, Kachkurkin chose to leave Russia and moved to Kazakhstan.
According to Perviy Otdel, Kachkurkin worked as a DevOps engineer and IT developer. Before his arrest, he was involved in several projects, including collaborative work with the U.S. nonprofit organization OpenAI, the developer of GPT language models.
Pervy Otdel has obtained a statement dated Jan. 28 and issued by Didar Akhanov, the head of the Bostandyq District Police Department in Almaty. It indicates that Kachkurkin was subjected to administrative penalties in Kazakhstan on two counts: jaywalking, and smoking a hookah in an enclosed space. Human rights activists claim that both reports were fabricated.
Nevertheless, based on these materials, the police petitioned the court to expel Kachkurkin, citing his “disrespect for the laws and sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan” and the need to “prevent and deter violations.” The entire process, from the drafting of the reports to the deportation, took just a few hours; typically, such cases are considered over the course of weeks or months.
In Russia, Kachkurkin was detained and brought before a judge. According to court records, on Jan. 31 the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow ordered that he be held in custody under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code (“treason”). At the time of publication, his defense had not appealed the arrest.
The court declined to comment to the state-controlled news agency TASS regarding the details of the criminal case, citing the closed nature of the proceedings for treason cases. Under the charge brought against him, Kachkurkin faces punishment of up to life imprisonment.
Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov noted that Kazakhstan is becoming unsafe not only for Russians, but also for Ukrainian nationals:
“This is a case where we see Kazakhstan’s law enforcement and laws being used to persecute people by Russian security forces. We are forced to note that Kazakhstan is ceasing to be a safe and lawful state, even for Ukrainian citizens.”
According to Perviy Otdel, roughly 10% of all charges brought in 2025 for “treason,” “espionage,” and “confidential cooperation with a foreign state” were related to money transfers to Ukraine. Human rights activists say Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) obtains information on transfers from Russian bank cards through Rosfinmonitoring, which has access to banking data. Information on transfers from foreign cards usually becomes known during phone checks at Russia’s border crossings.
On Jan. 30, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Kazakhstan approved the extradition to Russia of Chechen opposition activist Mansur Movlaev, a known critic ofChechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Movlaev’s defense considers the extradition illegal and warns that he faces torture and death in Russia. Despite this, Kazakh authorities granted Moscow’s request while providing assurances that the Russian side guarantees the absence of political motives for prosecution. According to human rights activists, similar guarantees had previously been given in other cases, ending in severe consequences for the extradited activists.