Areg Shchepikhin's arrest extended by six months

The Presnensky Court of Moscow extended the arrest of blogger Areg Shchepikhin, accused of extremism and insulting the feelings of believers, for six months.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, the participants in the abduction of blogger Areg Shchepikhin at the Yaroslavsky Station in Moscow, three of whom presented IDs of employees of the Russian Guard Directorate for Chechnya, were released on their own recognizance. The court arrested Shchepikhin himself for two months in the case of calls for extremism and incitement of hatred. On June 26, Shchepikhin apologized in court to residents of the Caucasus, stating that he repents, but the court refused to soften his preventive measure. On July 9, it became known that Shchepikhin’s data had been entered into the register of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring. The examination found him sane. In the final indictment, Shchepikhin is charged with three criminal articles1.

Areg Shchepikhin will remain in pretrial detention until at least January 22, 2026, the Presnensky District Court of Moscow ruled at today's hearing on the blogger's case.

Shchepikhin himself did not object to extending his arrest, but after negotiations with his lawyer, he supported the motion of his defense, which asked for a softening of the preventive measure to house arrest and a written undertaking not to leave. The court did not begin to consider Shchepikhin's case on the merits today, since the defendant was notified of the hearing late, the Telegram channel "Beware, News" reports.

During the hearing, the blogger expressed disagreement with one of the three charges against him - insulting the feelings of believers. According to Shchepikhin, this charge was added to him under pressure from the investigation for the unpublished video.

“I refused for a long time… If there was a way to somehow remove this article, I would gladly,” Mediazona quotes him as saying*.

It was also announced in court that Shchepikhin lived in the Empire tower in the Moscow-City complex before his arrest, although he was registered in the Voronezh region. When asked by the judge about his work, the blogger named three places of work and positions: journalist at the Federal News Service, coach at Skolkovo, and expert at an entrepreneurial association.

According to the case materials, Areg Shchepikhin was not registered with either a drug treatment center or a psychiatric hospital, although a forensic psychiatric examination revealed that he had a mixed personality disorder. Commenting on his case to journalists, he accused some of the investigators in drug addiction and said that he “found” the person who ordered his persecution.

The next hearing in the Shchepikhin case is scheduled for 2 p.m. Moscow time on September 2. From the next hearing, the trial has been moved to the Izmailovsky Court building in Moscow.

* are included in the register of foreign agents.

** the activities of the Meta company (which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) are prohibited in Russia.