Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the influential pro-Kremlin Rybar war blog, was arrested in Montenegro on Friday alongside his wife and three other Russians, local media reported. Police and security agents detained the group in the Adriatic resort town of Risan on suspicion of spreading Russian influence.
Arrest and official confirmation
Montenegro’s prime minister, Milojko Spajić, confirmed Zvinchuk’s detention in a post on X, saying it followed warnings that the country would face attempts at destabilisation and hybrid warfare. The Russian Telegram news channel Baza said officers detained Zvinchuk at the luxury Mövenpick hotel in Risan, and the group was taken to Podgorica, Montenegro’s capital, for questioning. Their phones and passports were confiscated.
Zvinchuk, a former press officer at Russia’s defence ministry, founded Rybar in 2018. The blog is one of the most popular Russian military channels covering the war in Ukraine, with more than 1.5 million subscribers on Telegram. It promotes Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and extends its pro-Kremlin narratives to Africa and the Middle East. More recently, it has been accused of amplifying far-right narratives around the migration crisis in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in north Africa.
Sanctions and response
Britain sanctioned Zvinchuk and Rybar in December 2025 for spreading Kremlin propaganda and undermining support for Ukraine. The British government said Zvinchuk received funding from the Russian state-owned defence conglomerate Rostec and worked with members of Russia’s intelligence services. The US has separately accused Zvinchuk of attempting to interfere in the 2024 presidential election, offering a reward of up to $10m for information about those involved.
Days before his arrest, Zvinchuk boasted on social media that he had entered Montenegro despite western sanctions and an entry ban, mocking a border guard who, he said, had failed to check his name against a database. The Rybar channel said on Telegram: “At the moment, the project team is in contact with Russia’s foreign ministry, which is working to resolve the situation. Since there were no violations of local legislation, we expect all detainees to be released.”
Diplomatic fallout
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was aware of Zvinchuk’s detention and would work to secure his release. Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev suggested Moscow could detain European and American citizens for prisoner exchanges, writing on social media: “We will probably have to replenish our pool of prisoners for exchange with European and American idiots in order to get our own people back.”
The arrest is likely to further strain relations between Montenegro and Russia, which have long been tense. In 2016, Montenegrin authorities accused Russian operatives of plotting with Serbian ultranationalists to stage a coup, allegations Moscow denied. Montenegro, which joined Nato in 2017 and is seeking EU membership, imposed sanctions on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The country recently approved plans to end visa-free travel for Russian citizens from 1 November, aligning its visa policy with the EU.
