Russia has locked up two of its own pro-war bloggers within days of each other, both after they turned their criticism on the Kremlin, The Moscow Times reported. One is a former military pilot now bound for a penal colony, the other is a self-styled mercenary chief sent to pre-trial detention. Their cases add to a growing list of hawkish commentators punished for questioning how Russia runs its war.
Russian war bloggers provide unofficial coverage of the invasion from the Russian side, praising Russia, justifying its war crimes, and often exaggerating its battlefield successes. Over time, some of them turn on the leadership, become entangled in schemes over money raised for the troops, or drift into other crimes—and end up in prison.
The pilot who bombed Ukraine, now headed to a penal colony
A garrison military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Alexei Zemtsov, a former Ka-52 attack-helicopter pilot who ran the pro-war Telegram channel Voevoda Veshchaet, to three years in a general-regime colony. The court found him guilty of making death threats, deliberately destroying property, and extortion. His own channel's administrators announced the verdict. A source told TASS that the sentence took "a number of mitigating circumstances" into account.
According to Zemtsov's associates, he intends to sign a military contract and deploy to the war against Ukraine. For that, the Defense Ministry would first have to discharge him and let him re-enlist, which they estimate could take 15 to 45 days.
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The case reached court in February 2026. In April, Zemtsov recorded a video saying he intended to take his own life over pressure from senior military figures, naming a deputy commander-in-chief of Russia's Aerospace Forces, Vladimir Kravchenko, his unit commander Colonel Avramenko, and a military investigator, Kantemirov.
Zemtsov was detained in autumn 2025, released, and rearrested in May 2026 after a conflict with his ex-wife and her lover—he accused her of cheating and beat the man—brought the charges against him. His former wife appeared in the case as a witness.
Until 2023, he co-ran a pro-war channel before founding his own, and he was later grounded after publishing criticism of the military command.
A "private army" chief and the Kremlin he came to hate
A day earlier, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court in Moscow placed Georgy Zakrevsky, 55, the founder of a group he called the Paladin military union, in detention on a charge of publicly "justifying terrorism," which carries up to seven years. The Russian Telegram channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported that the case stems from his Telegram posts.
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Zakrevsky had supported the invasion, but after Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast he began sharply attacking Putin, declaring that "the main enemy of Russia sits in the Kremlin." In his posts he said the country was "in big trouble": Ukrainian drones were striking central Russian regions, the Black Sea Fleet was being destroyed, and the army stood in the same positions it held more than two years earlier.
A month before his arrest, he released a video complaining of pressure on his organization, which he presented as a private military company of 250 people guarding sites in various countries without "cooperating with the regime." He stated he had fought in the Donbas in 2014, then in Syria and Lebanon.
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A widening crackdown on the war's loudest cheerleaders
The two are not alone. Milblogger Ilya Remeslo, who called Putin a war criminal, is in custody accused of spreading "fakes" about the Russian army, a charge carrying up to ten years. Yegor Guzenko, who runs the Telegram channel Trinadtsaty ("Thirteenth"), was detained on 10 July on an incitement-of-hatred charge that threatens up to six years. Guzenko fought against Ukraine and had called Putin crude names, accusing him of lying about internet shutdowns.
