Perm resident deported from the US gets 6 years in prison for calls to hang Putin

On 5 October 2026, The Moscow Times reported that the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg sentenced Leonid Melekhin, a Perm resident who had been deported from the United States, to six years in a general-regime colony. According to Mediazona, cited by the paper, Judge Igor Solomko also barred him for two years from administering websites and channels. The case was brought under the charge of “justification of terrorism” and involved two episodes, one of them linked to an online publication calling for Vladimir Putin to be hanged.

What the prosecution cited

Mediazona found that the prosecution was triggered by a post in the Telegram channel of Perm activist Yuri Bobrov, which showed photographs of Melekhin at a Mexico–US border crossing and a poster depicting Putin on a gallows. The poster’s text called Putin a “murderer,” a “fascist” and a “usurper,” and included a call to put “the fascist” on the gallows. What the second episode concerned is unknown, the report said. The trial began on 6 May and was held behind closed doors at the request of prosecutor Maria Otradnova, who cited a rise in “terrorist danger” in Sverdlovsk Region and a need not to disclose operational methods.

Deportation from the United States

Melekhin sought political asylum in the United States in the summer of 2024 and was refused. He was held until July 2025 in the San Luis immigration prison in Arizona. His former lawyer, Valery Kuznetsov, said Melekhin knew about the criminal case in Russia and “asked to go back himself.” The Moscow Times placed him among Russians deported after the Trump administration tightened immigration policy, and said that after returning to Russia at least two deportees, former serviceman Artem Vovchenko and Melekhin, were arrested.