Chikhunov wrote in his Telegram channel: “Officers from unit ‘E’ arrived and took me to the station. They say I once posted something extremist somewhere. We’ll sort it out”.
In the comments to the post, the administrator of the channel “Primorsky Dozor” said that the blogger is being charged with displaying extremist symbols for a 2020 post. As ASTRA уточняет, this refers to undeleted announcements of rallies by the movement in support of Sergei Furgal.
On February 22, 2024, this movement was recognized as extremist at the request of the prosecutor’s office. At the same time, as noted in the publication, it officially does not exist and is not registered.
Shortly before the detention, Chikhunov reported that part of the electricity consumers in Vladivostok had been left without power. In the penultimate post, he added: “Some voters in Vladivostok who voted for United Russia in September chose stability”.
In September 2025, Chikhunov had already been summoned to the police over a video showing FSB equipment at the entrance to a settlement where, allegedly, Ukrainian saboteurs had blown up Russian soldiers. In January, he reported torture and extortion of money under the threat of “zeroing out” at a military unit in Ussuriysk in Primorsky Krai, as well as door-to-door visits by agitators urging people to sign a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense.
In February 2023, Furgal was sentenced to 22 years in a high-security penal colony in a case involving the organization of two contract killings and an attempted murder. In December 2025, the court sentenced the former governor of Khabarovsk Krai to 23 years in a high-security penal colony in the “economic” case and banned him from holding public office for 2.5 years; combined with the previous sentence, he was given 25 years.
After Furgal’s detention in 2020, mass rallies in his support were held in Khabarovsk and other cities, and local residents linked the persecution to the region’s poor results in the vote on constitutional amendments and to Furgal’s victory in the gubernatorial election over the United Russia candidate.
