Mathematician Mikhail Verbitsky, who was arrested on June 12 at Yerevan airport, has been released. About this He said Radio Liberty’s lawyer Vash Simonyan.
According to him, Verbitsky was released because the Russian side did not send a request to the Armenian Prosecutor General’s Office for his arrest.
Meanwhile, Verbitsky, who has a ticket to Israel, will not be able to leave Armenia. The lawyer explained that this was due to the charges brought in Russia.
“I was arrested right at the airport, handcuffed and taken behind bars to a pre-trial detention center. At first they didn’t say anything, then they said they would transfer me to Russia. I was arrested because Russia is looking for me. I was aware of this, but I did not imagine that I would be arrested if I came to Armenia,” Verbitsky himself told the publication.
In Russia, Verbitsky has been included in the watch list of terrorists and extremists since January 2025. According to Verbitsky’s wife, Yulia Fridman, two criminal cases have been opened against the mathematician in Russia – about “discrediting” the army and “justifying terrorism.” She said that the terrorism case arose because the mathematician questioned the investigative methods at Crocus City Hall.
Mikhail Verbitsky worked at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow, taught at the Faculty of Mathematics at the Higher School of Economics, as well as at the University of Glasgow and the Free Belgian University in Brussels. He is known as a blogger and creator of Tifaretnik, a platform similar to LiveJournal. In an interview with Kholoud He saidHe left Russia in 2015 and lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he holds a professorship at the National Institute of Mathematics.