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Saturday, 14 November 2026 TelegramРусский
Politics

"They get budget money, and there's no result": how Russia's youth agency became a regular address for investigators

Rosmolodezh state secretary Denis Ashirov was detained on Friday over 40.5 million rubles in contracts with Synergy University. His former boss Ksenia Razuvaeva has admitted guilt in an embezzlement case, 46,800 hats went missing at the "Movement of the First", and Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin said of the agency in June: "They get budget money, and there's no result."

Kurs Media editorial teamUpdated
The main entrance to VDNKh during the "Russia" exhibition, for which the "Movement of the First" ordered 250,000 hats
The main entrance to VDNKh during the "Russia" exhibition, for which the "Movement of the First" ordered 250,000 hats. Photo: Svklimkin, CC BY 4.0

More than 50,000 people, according to Synergy University, took its online courses for specialists who work with young people. The courses taught the prevention of "negative social phenomena." The client was Rosmolodezh, Russia's Federal Agency for Youth Affairs: two contracts, in 2023 and 2024, worth 40.5 million rubles.

On Friday, November 13, a deputy head of the client agency was detained in Moscow.

Denis Ashirov is state secretary and deputy head of the agency. According to RBC, citing three law enforcement sources, he is suspected of large-scale fraud under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code, which carries up to ten years in prison. Investigators are examining how he organized the performance of the contracts, approved their results and accepted the work. Shortly before, Synergy's vice-rector for regional development, Mikhail Erofeev, was detained. According to TASS, the case concerns the theft of almost 20 million rubles. The university was searched; investigative actions took place in Moscow and the Moscow region.

Synergy said it is cooperating with investigators. The contracts, the university said, were won through competitive procedures, fulfilled in full and on time, and accepted by the client. More than 36,000 participants received professional development certificates. The case, the university stressed, was opened over the facts, not against the university or its staff.

Forty million rubles is not much for a federal agency. But this detention is not the first chapter; it is the latest. Over two years, criminal cases have touched the agency's former head, her father, a senior executive of the "Movement of the First" and the director of a subordinate center that handed out grants. And the head of the Investigative Committee gave his verdict on the agency in public back in June.

"I will talk about bad youth"

June 26, the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum, youth section. The hall is packed. Alexander Bastrykin opens his lecture: "I will talk about bad youth."

He talked less about young people than about those responsible for them. Bastrykin said that officials from the Education Ministry and Rosmolodezh attend the council on preventing juvenile crime, where he sits. "The work they present to us somehow does not inspire confidence," he said.

Then it got harsher. "Rosmolodezh is fraud." "They get budget money, and there's no result." "Why do anything when you can just put grants in your pockets and wait for the next grant?" And, addressing the officials: "Don't be offended, comrades. There is no result from your work at all, I can tell you that for sure."

The "Movement of the First", the country's main youth organization, created in 2022, got its share too. Bastrykin recalled the Soviet Octobrists, Pioneers and Komsomol and asked: "The 'Movement of the First', right? Does it exist? And where are these 'first' going? Where are they? Can't hear them, can't see them!" He proposed reviving the Octobrists, the Pioneers and the Komsomol, perhaps under other names.

Of the agency's former head, a young woman, he said briefly: "She simply got caught in fraud. I won't name her."

A court named the family that same day. Moscow's Meshchansky District Court sentenced Denis Razuvaev, the father of Ksenia Razuvaeva, who headed Rosmolodezh in 2021–2024, to six and a half years in a general-regime penal colony for large-scale fraud in a case over money raised for the special military operation. The head of the Civic Position foundation, Alexander Daryev, received nine years in the same case.

"The accused has admitted guilt"

Ksenia Razuvaeva became head of Rosmolodezh in May 2021. Under her, the agency's budget exceeded 60 billion rubles in 2023. On August 14, 2024, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin relieved her of her post at her own request. She cited family circumstances. Her father, according to media reports, had been detained earlier that same August.

Her deputy, the same Denis Ashirov, became acting head. In September, Grigory Gurov was appointed head of the agency, and Ashirov became state secretary.

For almost two years nothing was officially reported about Razuvaeva. Then it emerged that she had been detained on December 17, 2025. The FSB's investigative department opened a case under Part 4 of Article 160 — misappropriation or embezzlement on an especially large scale. The next day the Lefortovo court placed her under house arrest. A second case under the same article followed on February 2, 2026. None of this reached the press or the court's public database.

The details became known in August, from a Moscow City Court ruling of June 11 found by Business Online. The court replaced house arrest with a ban on certain actions: no leaving home from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., no internet, no contact with witnesses — and no attending events of Rosmolodezh or the "Movement of the First". One sentence in the ruling explains the leniency: "The accused has admitted guilt and is ready to compensate for the damage." According to the publication, Razuvaeva asked investigators not to seek an overly long sentence.

What exactly she embezzled, and how much, has not been officially disclosed. Her trial has not yet taken place.

46,800 hats

The most vivid episode in this story involves hats.

On October 19, 2023, the head office of the "Movement of the First" ordered 250,000 knitted hats for the "Russia" exhibition at VDNKh in Moscow. The 133.7 million ruble contract went to DPV Group, a company from Tatarstan. The exhibition opened on November 4 and ran until July 8, 2024.

According to the FSB, 203,200 hats were delivered. Another 46,800 existed only on paper, yet they were paid for in full. Investigators put the damage at 25 million rubles.

Marat Zakirov, deputy chair of the board of the "Movement of the First" since 2022 and a former head of two districts of Kazan, was arrested in the case. According to Business Online, the total damage he is accused of is 1.6 billion rubles; the hats are only one episode. Also charged are Elkin Iskenderov, a former president of the Tatarstan Student League, and Marat Khairullin, the supplier's general director according to the Kontur.Focus database. Zakirov and Iskenderov have admitted guilt. At the end of July, Moscow's Tagansky District Court began hearing the case on its merits.

Business Online calls this chain the "Kazan trail" in the Razuvaeva case: according to investigators, the defendants have given confessions.

145 winners who never existed

Rosmolodezh distributes money mainly through grants, and investigators have built up experience here as well.

The Youth Resource Center, a federal institution subordinate to Rosmolodezh, coordinated the All-Russian youth project competition. According to investigators, more than 273 million rubles were siphoned off through the competition between January 2019 and August 2022. The winners included 145 people who never intended to do anything. Their data were collected by employees of an advertising agency in the town of Murom. Each "project" received between 1.2 and 2.7 million rubles, and the money was cashed out.

The center's former head of methodology received six years; a former Murom municipal deputy who ran the agency got seven and a half years in a strict-regime colony. The center's former director, Alexei Lyubtsov, whom investigators describe as the organizer of a criminal community, denies guilt. In June the prosecutor asked for 21 years.

In Crimea the scheme was simpler. A former head of the grants department at the republic's State Committee for Youth Policy persuaded business acquaintances to apply for Rosmolodezh grants. No work was done, and the money was cashed out through sole proprietorships he controlled. The damage: 10.5 million rubles. The sentence: five and a half years and a fine of 1 million rubles.

How many patriots in the report

Warning signs appeared before the criminal cases. In March 2024, the Accounts Chamber audited Rospatriotcenter, a Rosmolodezh subsidiary that received 3.2 billion rubles from the budget in 2021–2023.

The auditors could not assess how many young people were actually involved in its events "due to the likelihood of the same participants being counted more than once," auditor Danil Shilkov explained. The center had no criteria for measuring social impact. Its 2022 accounts contained unreliable data that distorted Rosmolodezh's own consolidated reporting. The chamber's conclusion: the agency had failed to ensure proper oversight of its own institution.

The money keeps growing

The stakes, meanwhile, keep rising. The "Youth and Children" national project is set to receive almost 1.8 trillion rubles in 2026–2028: 546.9 billion this year, 584.9 billion next year and 662.5 billion in 2028. Youth policy remains in the portfolio of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, as confirmed by the redistribution of duties on October 30.

The agency is now headed by Grigory Gurov, 41. He first joined Rosmolodezh in 2017, later served as deputy science minister, and from December 2022 to September 2024 chaired the board of the "Movement of the First".

For Ashirov, 38, this may end a career that began in the Moscow branch of the Young Guard of United Russia. For Rosmolodezh, it is another episode in a chronicle Bastrykin summed up in June. Recalling his Pioneer childhood, he quoted words he attributed to Marx: "We did not have a single minute of free time to commit crimes."

Judging by the criminal record, the officials responsible for Russia's youth have found the time.

Update, November 14, 2026. House arrest instead of jail. On the evening of November 13, Moscow's Tverskoy District Court rejected the investigator's request to remand Denis Ashirov in custody and placed him under house arrest until December 10, Interfax reported. He is charged under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code, large-scale fraud. According to TASS, Synergy vice-rector Mikhail Erofeev was also placed under house arrest. He denies guilt.

According to investigators, almost 20 million rubles may have been stolen in the performance of one of the contracts. Media reports say it was a 31.5 million ruble contract to create an online course, much of which the university passed on to subcontractors, paying them about 13.5 million.

Rosmolodezh told TASS that the contracts were awarded "following open competitive procedures," that the services were provided "in full, with more than 50,000 people completing the training," and that the agency is assisting law enforcement.

Sources

Most sources are in Russian.

Kurs Media editorial team. Corrections and statements from the parties: press@kursmedia.com. Read in Russian.

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