19 February 2026
The reversal of the order to detain Aliya Galitskaya may change the deplorable practices of the Investigative Committee.
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya Gazeta
Istra judge Fedor Grigoryev, who on 6 February ordered the detention of Aliya Galitskaya on the charge of extorting $150 million from her ex-husband, the financier Aleksandr Galitsky, has resigned, according to the news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti, and Human Rights Council member Eva Merkacheva. Istra Court Chair Irina Putynets is likewise understood to have resigned.
Galitskaya committed suicide in the Istra temporary holding facility from which she was to be transferred to a pre-trial detention centre. She left a suicide note in which she blamed her ex-husband for her death. On 10 February, the Presnensky district court decided not to cancel the seizure of property belonging to the ex-husband worth 435 million roubles, imposed as part of a lawsuit filed by his ex-wife. And on 18 February, the Moscow Regional Court overturned the decision to detain Galitskaya.
The news agencies state in their reporting, “according to our sources,” the resignation of the judge and the chair of the Istra court came as the result of an intervention by Supreme Court Chair Igor Krasnov, who had been “outraged” by the incident. Read: the press service of the Supreme Court itself passed this information on to the news agencies at the behest of Krasnov, who decided to set an important precedent from Galitskaya’s unlawful arrest. Good for him!
The non-use of custody “as a last resort” (as it appears in the Criminal Procedure Code) in cases that do not involve violent crimes is a longstanding and fundamental matter. Under the chairmanship of Vyacheslav Lebedev, the Plenum of the Supreme Court repeatedly instructed the lower courts to avoid the excessive use of custody in such cases, and to instead make greater use of house arrest or measures that do not involve imprisonment.
The results of these clarifications by the Supreme Court, which are supposedly binding on the lower courts, have yet to be seen. Pre-trial detention is too convenient a tool, sometimes the only one, that investigators and prosecuting bodies use to exert pressure on defendants. This cruel practice is accompanied by the use of special conditions in pre-trial detention centres, even torture. This is then employed to extract testimony, including false confessions, not least in cases involving corruption.
High-profile and scandalous divorce proceedings (it is worth recalling the “Wildberries case”) are not the only examples of how civil disputes are transformed into raider-type operations using the toolkit of the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code.
Igor Krasnov, a former ‘investigator for especially important cases’, and former deputy chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee and prosecutor general, knows these shadowy practices inside out. Moreover, there may be grounds to suspect that the criminal case that ended with the suicide of Aliya Galitskaya was ordered from on high, something which (“according to sources”) infuriated the Supreme Court chair.
Krasnov will surely comprehend how the precedent he has just set will affect working practices, primarily those of investigative bodies. The suicide was awful, but at least it has not been for nothing.
Translated by Lindsay Munford
