13 May 2026
by OVD-Info
Source: OVD-Info
Hello!
This letter is dedicated to those that the authorities are persecuting for their donations to the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Unfortunately, there are becoming more of them. As of today, we know of 211 such cases.
OVD-Info cannot stay on the sidelines, since the very beginning we have investigated and publicised these cases and, of course, worked to help them. We are currently supporting 18 defendants prosecuted for financing the Anti-Corruption Foundation by providing and funding their legal defence.
We really need your help – we need to collect 840,000 roubles to pay for 2 months’ of legal defence for 6 defendants.
Donating to OVD-Info in roubles is safe – our organisation is not proscribed by the Russian government. This fundraising effort is in no way affiliated with the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
What happened
Until 2021, making donations to the Anti-Corruption Foundation was relatively safe. This changed in August 2021 when a prosecutor’s petition to a Russian court to declare the Anti-Corruption Foundation an extremist organisation was adopted by that court.
It is a criminal offence to finance organisations and bodies officially labelled as ‘extremist’ by the Russian Government.
Aleksei Navalny’s team had, in advance of this court hearing, blocked all donations from Russian banks to protect their supporters. They alter announced a re-launch of their donation campaign using the American service Stripe. It was seen as safer for supporters since Stripe would not provide details of who received payments to the Russian banks.
At the beginning of this new campaign, on 5th August 2021, a mistake was made whereby Russian banks nevertheless got wind of the website name: WORLD.FBK.IN. This problem was later fixed according he the Foundation, but this leak became the starting point for the criminal prosecution.
Journalists established that the Russian authorities began to be able to see which Stripe payments were to be paid to the Anti-Corruption Foundation. They probably were helped by technical details here like that would be sent to the Russian bank in any case like, for example, merchant id. This enabled the authorities to start a mass campaign of prosecutions against the Foundation’s supporters – it continues to this day.
It started with a few isolated cases, then it became dozens. As of today, we know of 211 people facing prosecutions for financing the Foundation. OVD-Info is defending 18 of them right now.
We need your help – we need to collect 840,000 roubles to pay for lawyers for six defendants. This will help pay for their legal fees for two months.
We don’t lose hope
Despite the scale of the prosecutions, we know that freedom is possible for those accused. Prosecutors fight for the most lenient possible punishments in these cases.
Today, we want to talk about two of our clients – in 2025 we helped to gather money to fund their lawyers. One is a folklore expert from Khanty-Maniisk, Valerii Ledkov; the other is a Krasnodar programmer called Dmitrii Dyba. Both were charged with donating money to the Anti-Corruption Foundation. They were threatened with 8 years in prison each, and imprisonment is precisely what the prosecutor demanded in each case.
Thanks to their defence lawyers this year, Valerii and Dmitrii are both free. In February 2026, the Seventh Cassation Court commuted Ledkov’s sentence from three years’ imprisonment to a suspended sentence. In March this year, it was discovered that Dmitrii Dyba’s lawyers has successfully commuted his sentence from imprisonment to a fine of 300,000 roubles.
We know that in cases concerning donations to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, hope is not a lost cause. The lawyers fight for each day their clients spend as free people. Support our lawyers defending these six clients on Zaodno.
Who are we defending?
Anton Zhigalov, a 42-year-old entrepreneur from Kaliningrad. In October 2025 he was arrested for donating to the Anti-Corruption Foundation – 7 donations of 300 roubles each. While being held in remand prison, he was not allowed to ring his wife or use the library there. In December 2025, he was moved to house arrest. Zhigalov’s wife and two children were not allowed by the judge to attend the court hearing where the sentence was passed.
Aleksandr Moiseyuk was the former chief editor of the media outlet YA62.RU, based in Ryazan near Moscow. He was charged in February this year for donating 300 roubles. His hearings began at the end of April.
The other four people requested not to be listed here. They are three men and a woman from various regions of Russia, workers and scientists. None of them were members of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and none were political activists. The only common factor is that they all contributed small amounts to Aleksei Navalny’s foundation, (donations ranging from 300 to 3000 roubles – or approximately £3 to £30). They are each threatened with up to eight years’ imprisonment.
We are convinced that no one should have to face the system alone and we are asking you to help us make this a reality!
In solidarity,
The OVD-Info Team
Translated by Oscar Seecharan
