16 Years for $250: Russia Jails Dual Citizen for Transfer to Ex

Sixteen years. That is 5,840 days in a maximum-security penal colony, imposed by a Russian court for a single private transfer to an ex-girlfriend in Ukraine described as worth about two hundred euros. The Pskov Regional Court convicted dual Russian-Belgian citizen Mikhail Loshchinin of treason on June 2, 2026, and imposed the 16-year term on that basis ²⁵. The scale is the story: a remittance small enough to cover a week of groceries recast as aid to an enemy state, and punished as if it were espionage or battlefield support.

Loshchinin, 48, is a programmer who had lived in Europe since the late 1990s, most recently in Germany, and who became a Belgian citizen in 2000 ⁴⁷. That biography matters because he was not a soldier, an official, or a political operative in Russia. He was a long-settled emigrant with two passports, a technical job, and family ties stretching back across the border he would later try to cross.

He tried to cross it in the summer of 2025 to visit his father, who had suffered a heart attack ⁴⁷. He was detained at a border checkpoint in the Pskov region while trying to enter Russia for that family visit ⁴⁷. Officials found correspondence with several contacts at the time of the detention ⁴⁷. What began as an urgent trip to see an ailing parent became the opening of a treason investigation that would keep him in custody for nearly a year before any verdict.

The treason charge followed in December 2025, first reported by Sever.Realii and Meduza ⁷¹⁰. Six months later came the conviction and sentence on June 2, 2026 ²⁵. The court ordered the 16 years to be served in a maximum-security penal colony ²⁴. For a man detained during a family emergency, the calendar moved slowly and then decisively: detention, charge, half a year of pretrial custody, and then a verdict that effectively removes his fifties.

Prosecutors framed the transfer as “financing representatives of a foreign state recognized as an adversary of the Russian Federation” ². The court accused him of transferring money “with the aim of enabling her to take up arms against Russia” ⁵. In other words, money sent to a Ukrainian ex-girlfriend was not treated as personal help between former partners. It was treated as purposeful support for someone who could fight against Russia, and that reclassification turned a private payment into treason.

The sources disagree on how to state the amount, and the difference is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over. Some accounts describe it in euros at around 200, while RFE/RL puts the sum at “$250” ³. The research file treats those figures as the same transfer rendered in different currencies, at about €200 / ~$250, but no source provides a bank slip, a transfer receipt, or an exact euro figure confirmed on the record. What is consistent is the order of magnitude: this was a few hundred dollars or euros, not a weapons purchase, not a sustained funding stream.

Loshchinin denied the logic of the case to the end. In his final statement, as reported by Mediazona, he said the entire accusation was built on lies ¹¹. He also described his detention in stark terms: “Psychological and physical torture were a daily occurrence. This is a world where you are no longer a person” ¹¹. Those are his words about his treatment, not an independent finding about the detention facility, and they stand in the record as his account alongside the court’s verdict.

Belgium moved after the verdict to seek consular access to its citizen, a step reported on June 11, 2026, on AFP reporting ⁵. His supporters describe the charges as “trumped-up” ⁵. That response points to the second passport at the heart of the case: Russia treated Loshchinin as a Russian citizen answerable for treason, while Belgium treated him as a Belgian entitled to outside contact and scrutiny of the process.

The judgment stretches the practical meaning of treason well beyond passing secrets or joining an enemy force. If a years-old personal transfer can be defined after the fact as financing an adversary because the recipient is Ukrainian and could theoretically fight, then almost any cross-border remittance with a personal history becomes legally fragile. The court did not need to show that the ex-girlfriend took up arms, or that Loshchinin intended a military outcome in any operational sense. It was enough, on the court’s account, to attribute that aim to the transfer itself ⁵.

That is why the publicly available record leaves so many basic questions open. No source provides verbatim court or prosecutor quotes beyond the charge description, and none reports whether an appeal has been filed — that remains unreported. The case rests so far on court and family accounts carried by independent outlets, without broader independent confirmation of the underlying transfer documents or the correspondence found at the border. The verdict is established; the evidence behind its interpretation is not publicly testable.