Kyrgyzstan expels Russian Z-blogger, tried for recruiting mercenaries

Russian pro-war blogger and political strategist Viktor Vasilyev has been expelled from Kyrgyzstan, he announced on his Telegram channel. He is also banned from entering the country for 10 years. He was tried in the Central Asian country for recruiting Kyrgyz citizens into the Russian army to participate in the war against Ukraine.

Vasilyev wrote that state authorities gave him 10 days to leave the country, and he left Kyrgyzstan across the border voluntarily. Vasilyev complained that he did not have time to “file a lawsuit against the Azattyk publication (this is the Kyrgyz service of Radio Liberty) and pick up his shoes from repair.”

Vasilyev had previously posted a video on his channels and pages in which he addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin, journalists, and “comrades in Africa.” In it, he calls himself a “journalist, political scientist and Africanist”, denies the charges against him and claims that the case against him is an “order” by the British special services and “agents of influence” who allegedly bribed the Kyrgyz authorities.

On April 17, 2025, the State Committee for National Security of Kyrgyzstan detained four people in Osh in a mercenary case and took them to the country’s capital, Bishkek. Among those detained were an employee of the Osh city hall, Sergei Lapushkin, and an employee of the Russian House office (a representative office of the Russian Federation) in Osh, Natalia Sekerina. Two more people, known only by their initials, were also detained. One of them worked at a lamp factory in Jalal-Abad region; Russian media reported that the fourth suspect was Viktor Vasilyev.

He described himself as a “political scientist,” but according to journalistic investigations, Vasilyev cooperates with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. In Russia, Vasilyev was a political strategist in the structure of the founder of the Wagner PMC mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Viktor Vasilyev is mentioned in several investigations. The Dossier Center found that until 2018 he had the surname Lukovenko. He studied at Moscow State University and was an activist of the Russian Verdict organization; in 2011 he was sentenced to eight years in a maximum security colony for the murder of a 58-year-old native of Sri Lanka on the day of the “Russian March.” Five years later, Lukovenko was released on parole.

After his release, Vasilyev-Lukovenko ended up in Africa, and since 2019 he has been running the Telegram channel “Ulybaemsya i mashem.” This channel, as journalists found out, is part of the “network of channels” that Prigozhin has been creating for several years.

Vasilyev-Lukovenko also launched the “Russian-Ukrainian Radical Initiative” project, which was controlled by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff. Within the framework of the Russian-Ukrainian Radical Initiative, several supposedly pro-Ukrainian channels were created that spread reports about the killing of Ukrainian civilians through the distribution of weapons to the population and criticized the territorial defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Source: https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/news-kyrgyzstan-z-bloger-vysylka/33810562.html