He Went to Meet a Woman. Russia Gave Him 15 Years.

By the time Russian agents filmed themselves catching David Adrian Kercso, they had already held him for months. Reuters established the mismatch by comparing the FSB’s footage with detention records. The man in the blue hat was performing an arrest that had already happened.

Kercso, a Romanian raised in England, had travelled to the Black Sea coast after meeting a woman online, his family says. The journey ended in a Russian espionage conviction and a 15-year sentence. He disputes the case.

The Russian prosecution offers a specific account. In a statement published in March, Krasnodar prosecutors said Kercso had obtained information about a military installation while visiting Sochi in August 2024. They alleged he sent that information to a Ukrainian intelligence representative in November, adding descriptions of equipment and fencing. The regional court convicted him under Russia’s espionage law and ordered a strict-regime prison term.

Memorial’s prisoner-support project reconstructs a different route into Russian custody. Drawing on accounts from Kercso and his relatives, it says he went to Abkhazia in August 2024 for the relationship and hoped to return to Britain with the woman. It places his detention in Abkhazia on November 28 and his transfer to Russian officers on December 13.

Months of short administrative detentions followed, according to Memorial. Its dossier describes promises that a filmed confession would secure his departure or an exchange. Kercso alleges that his captors used coercion and violence to obtain his statements.

Memorial dates the staged arrest to April 15, 2025. It also identifies changes between official accounts of the supposed spying: when the contact began, what he allegedly photographed and where he was meant to have done it. The organisation challenges the prosecution while acknowledging that it lacks the full case file.

The FSB did not answer Reuters’s questions. Its footage presents a prisoner’s staged capture as a real arrest; the detention chronology exposes the difference.