Telegram channels Ural Mash and URALLIVE, run by supporters of TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov, reported that law enforcers came to the apartment of Yekaterinburg activist Yaroslav Shirshikov, who first reported the disappearance of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich on March 30.
Ural Mash has published footage of Shirshikov being handcuffed at his home and then taken out of his apartment. Law enforcement agencies did not comment on the video. Both telegram channels claim that Shirshikov's detention was caused by posts on his telegram channel, where he, among other things, spoke about the detention of Gershkovich and expressed an opinion about the murder of Darya Dugina and military commissar Vladlen Tatarsky.
Nelli Karimova, Shirshikov's common-law wife, later confirmed to Vecherniye Vedomosti that FSB officers came to their apartment. According to her, at 9 o'clock in the morning they began to persistently knock on the door, a man in a blue uniform introduced himself as an employee of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and reported a «gas leak». Near the door, Karimova added, there was indeed a smell of gas. “That is, they really got confused to make it look realistic,” Karimova said.
When she opened the door, security forces burst into the apartment, saying that they were from the FSB and were carrying out operational-search activities. When asked about the status of Shirshikov, the security forces replied that he was a witness in a criminal case and he was being taken to the «talk» department.
URALLIVE calls Shirshikov «a maniac who justifies murders.» In early April, Solovyov's supporters wrote that the pro-government public movement «Call of the People» sent an appeal to the chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin with a request to check Shirshikov under the article on justifying terrorism (205.2 of the Criminal Code).
Journalist Evan Gershkovich was detained on March 29 in Yekaterinburg on suspicion of espionage (Article 276 of the Criminal Code). The next day, a court in Moscow sent him to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. On April 7, the journalist was charged, which he categorically denied. According to the FSB, the Wall Street Journal correspondent “on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting state secrets about the activities of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
Updated at 11:45: Added comment by Nelli Karimova.