The 31-year-old man, Nikita Kamensky, was detained at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport shortly after his flight from Istanbul landed in the morning. A police officer there told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that he was set free a few hours later after signing a pledge not to leave the country.
A short statement released by the Armenian police said Kamensky was put on Russian law-enforcement authorities’ wanted list in December for “vandalism.” It said nothing about his possible extradition to Russia.
Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS), which usually deals with extradition cases, refused to comment.
According to OVD Info, a Russian human rights group, Russian authorities launched criminal proceedings against Kamensky in July after he painted at a Moscow subway station graffiti protesting against Russia’s war in Ukraine. They interrogated him and searched his home at the time. He reportedly pledged not to leave Russia during the investigation.
Kamensky could not be reached for comment. Yury Alexeyev, a Russian antigovernment activist based in Armenia, said his friends have already asked Armenian lawyers to represent him and help prevent his extradition to Russia.
Alexeyev and several other Russian expats have staged protests in Yerevan over the past year against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. None of them is known to have been deported from the country.
“Nikita’s case is interesting in the sense that we will see what Armenia can do,” said Alexeyev.
Artur Sakunts, an Armenian human rights activist, said that despite a Russian-Armenian treaty on mutual extradition of fugitive criminal suspects the Armenian authorities must not extradite Kamensky or any other Russian critic of the war facing “political persecution” at home.
The Russian government enacted last spring laws that effectively criminalized vocal opposition to the military campaign in Ukraine.