The Supreme Court of Komi found Russian and Canadian citizen Nikolai Zyuzev guilty of treason in the form of analytical work and information gathering for foreign organizations deemed undesirable in Russia. The court sentenced him to seven years in a high-security penal colony.
According to the FSB, in February 2022 Zyuzev developed and began implementing a project aimed against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. The agency claims that the project involved work in 12 areas, including training leaders of national liberation movements of the small indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation abroad, distributing extremist materials, and collecting and analyzing information at the request of government bodies and analytical centers of the European Union.
The FSB Public Relations Center also stated that Zyuzev allegedly received more than 2 million euros from 12 foreign organizations deemed undesirable in the Russian Federation. Among them, the agency named the German H. Seidel Foundation, the Prague Civil Society Centre, the German Society for Foreign Policy Research from Germany, the Swedish Institute, the French organization IREX Europe, Chatham House, and the Black Sea Regional Cooperation Fund from the United Kingdom.
Nikolai Zyuzev is a Russian-Canadian philosopher, sociologist, and historian of science, Doctor of Philosophy. He taught at universities in Komi and completed an internship at Harvard.
Since 2008, Zyuzev lived in Canada and worked at Canada's Massey College. In 2015, he obtained Canadian citizenship while retaining Russian citizenship, and later lived between Canada and Russia.
After the start of the war, Zyuzev moved back to Canada, but continued to visit Komi. In the summer of 2025, he was detained after a search.
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