Burkeev Rinat Bakhchanovich

On March 23, 2022, in Ufa, a criminal case was opened against seven members of the “Marxist Circle”: Dmitry Chuvilin, Pavel Matisov, Yuri Efimov, Alexey Dmitriev, Rinat Burkeev, Leonid Golovanov, and Miftakh Yusupov. On March 24, searches were conducted at the activists’ homes with the support of the FSB. It is alleged that grenades, non-lethal weapons, homemade Molotov cocktails, communication devices, field gear, and certain extremist literature were seized from them.

The Ufa residents were charged with forming a terrorist group and inciting terrorist activity. According to the investigation, the “Marxist Circle” planned a violent seizure of power. The charges were based on three texts and two videos posted in the circle’s VKontakte group between 2019 and 2021. In one of the videos, the group’s program is read aloud, and in the second, one of the activists declares that Russia is “occupied by capitalists” and calls for the overthrow of the capitalist regime.

Initially, the group’s members met once a week to discuss the classics of scientific communism, but later three former combatants from the Donbas conflict joined the group. The new members, among whom was Sergei Sapozhnikov, a Ukrainian who had obtained Russian citizenship, began assigning call signs to the others, proposed drafting a charter, and held gatherings where they set off airsoft grenades. Later, Sapozhnikov testified to the FSB that the Marxists were allegedly “waiting for an unstable situation to seize power and kill police officers and politicians.”

On March 26, 2022, the Soviet District Court of Ufa remanded the Ufa residents to pretrial detention at the request of the investigation.

On December 16, 2025, the Central District Military Court found the defendants guilty and sentenced Alexei Dmitriev to 20 years in a maximum-security prison, Pavel Matisov to 22 years, Yuri Efimov to 18 years, Rinat Burkeev to 16 years, and Dmitry Chuvilin to 20 years in a maximum-security prison.