Daria Egereva was supposed to be in New York next week. The Indigenous Selkup climate advocate was expected to return to the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, where two years ago she spoke about how Indigenous peoples are confronting environmental degradation and climate change. Instead, this year she is in a Russian jail, facing up to 20 years in prison on terrorism charges. 

Egereva was arrested on December 17 along with Natalya Leongardt, another Russian advocate for Indigenous peoples, whose name was not released publicly until last week. Both face accusations of participating in a terrorist group due to their former involvement in the Aborigen Forum, an informal network of Indigenous advocates that was shut down by the Russian government two years ago. 

Experts say their detention is indicative of a growing repression of Indigenous advocacy in the Russian Federation, part of Russia’s broader shift to authoritarianism that has worsened since the country invaded Ukraine. “Indigenous activists have been a bellwether for new forms of repression that the Russian government then tries out on all the other activists, environmentalists, feminists, other groups of people, human rights,” said Laura Henry, a professor of government at Bowdoin College who studies contemporary Russian politics.

Egereva has been active in international climate advocacy for years and is a current co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, which represents Indigenous perspectives at U.N. convenings. Despite working on entrenched challenges like climate change, those who know her describe her as upbeat and motivating to others. 

“She’s strongly advocating … the need to recognize the security of land rights of Indigenous peoples,” said Joan Carling, who is Indigenous Kankanaey from the Philippines and co-founder of Indigenous Peoples Rights International, adding that Egereva also is a strong advocate for acknowledging the value of Indigenous knowledge. “Not only to be recognized, but to be enhanced and supported, because we are contributing a lot of effective solutions to climate change using our traditional knowledge.”

Two years ago, Egereva spoke at the Permanent Forum in New York, where she urged U.N. member states to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples. “Many Indigenous peoples continue to be pushed off their land, experience land degradation, environmental degradation, and lack of access to basic services,” she said, adding that climate change is a new challenge. “Those challenges are heightening the vulnerability of Indigenous peoples all over the world.” Her comments were in line with statements that Carling heard from Egereva. 

“Even in global spaces she’s not even attacking Russia as such, she’s contributing to discussing and presenting Indigenous issues in general,” Carling said.

In November, Egereva attended COP30 in Belém, Brazil, where she spoke about the importance of including Indigenous women in climate policy discussions. On December 17, she was arrested along with Leongardt, who is known for her work leading educational programs for Indigenous peoples in Russia and a former intern at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva.

Last month, a Russian court agreed to extend their detention until at least June. They each could face up to 20 years in prison. 

The sharp increase in Russian repression prompted the U.N. to appoint a new special rapporteur on the Russian Federation. In a report last fall by the current special rapporteur, Mariana Katzarova, she wrote that Russia has been silencing opposition to the war on Ukraine and that repression has worsened in 2024 and 2025. She emphasized specific harms against journalists, environmental defenders and Indigenous advocates, among other marginalized groups. “Sergei Kechimov, a shaman of the Indigenous Khanty people, who battled oil giant Surgutneftegaz over a sacred lake, died while undergoing prolonged persecution for his environmental work,” her report recounts. 

Just last week, Katzarova and other U.N. officials called for the release of both Egereva and Leongardt. “We are profoundly alarmed by such blatant abuse of counterterrorism and anti-extremism legislation to criminalize peaceful expression and anti-war positions, leading to the total destruction of civil society in Russia,” they wrote. “This practice cannot be tolerated and must end.”

Indigenous environmental activists in Russia have long clashed with the state over their rights. “There was this moment in the 1990s where Indigenous activists were right there alongside others struggling for democracy, for self-governance, for more regional decision-making,” said Henry, the professor at Bowdoin College. “But I think one of the real challenges that emerged even well before the authoritarian turn is that Russia began to be kind of a petrostate, extractive, natural resource-dependent state, that was what was fueling economic growth and economic recovery, and that model became the state’s priority. And it just so happens that there’s a pretty significant coincidence of traditional Indigenous territory and these sites of extraction.” 

As Indigenous communities in Russia experienced more environmental degradation from fossil fuel production and loss of access to their territories, they spoke about what they were experiencing both locally and internationally, to the displeasure of the Russian government. In 2012, Russia created a “foreign agents” law that was used to shut down organizations that were allegedly influenced by foreign governments. Around this time, the government also accused Indigenous rights activists of being “separatists,” with increasing repression driven by an intolerance of dissent and a desire to control narratives and information. “These newer accusations of extremism and then terrorism are just a further escalation, and I think really shocking to many, many people,” Henry said.

In 2018, Johannes Rohr, a German researcher of and advocate for Indigenous rights, was banned from Russia for 50 years after raising concerns in Geneva about how Indigenous Nenets in Russia’s Yamal Peninsula were being affected by a liquified natural gas project. According to OVD-Info, an independent group that tracks political prosecutions and detentions in Russia, Rohr’s expulsion from the country occurred amidst a broader, sharper increase in political crackdowns. The number of politically motivated detentions quadrupled from 46 in 2012 to 220 in 2018, and then doubled from 220 in 2018 to 449 in 2024, the year with the latest available data. “Back then that felt like the end of the world,” Rohr said. Now he said his fate pales to Egereva and Leongardt, who could be imprisoned for decades. “Every time you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it manages somehow to get even worse,” he added. 

In 2024, Russia designated more than 170 organizations as terrorist groups, including the Aborigen Forum, an informal network of Indigenous rights advocates. Egereva was affiliated through her work at a member organization known as the Center for Support of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North. Leongardt is also a former administrator of the center, where she organized internships and international exchanges for Indigenous participants. “We condemn this deliberate strategy of using ‘extremism’ and counterterrorism frameworks to dismantle civil society, criminalize and imprison human rights defenders, and target those seeking their support,” the U.N. special rapporteurs said in their recent statement. “Russian authorities must immediately halt proceedings against human rights defenders and anti-war critics and release all those arbitrarily detained for their peaceful human rights work.”

The effect, Henry said, is that Indigenous advocates are discouraged from maintaining global networks in solidarity with other Indigenous peoples and from speaking out about what’s happening in their territories and on issues like climate change. “Russia is one of those countries where there is still quite a bit of climate change denialism, where there’s a sense that international efforts to address climate change are actually in part covert efforts to weaken Russia,” she said. “This rhetoric exists alongside the fact that the permafrost is melting rapidly in the Russian north and causing no end of problems with infrastructure from roads to railways to pipelines to housing, and the Russian government has set up elaborate permafrost monitoring.” 

Egereva and Leongardt’s international colleagues say that their detentions are costing the global community. “Daria represents a small Indigenous community in Russia, the Selkup people, and her absence [from the U.N. Permanent Forum] has particular significance for representation of small-numbered Indigenous peoples,” said Aivana Enmykau, who is Indigenous Nuvaqaghmiit from Russia and planning to attend the U.N. event. “Even [losing] one such person like Daria has a serious impact on their ability to represent their problems, their concerns, their ability to be heard.”

Carling said Egereva’s absence will grow stronger with each coming climate gathering, the Bonn Climate Change Conference in Germany this June and COP31 event in Turkey in November, given her work advocating for Indigenous women in international climate discussions. “We should not tolerate the silencing of Indigenous peoples, wherever they are, in whatever country they come from,” Carling said. 

For Egereva and Leongardt, the cost of this crackdown on Indigenous and environmental advocacy is exceedingly personal. This month, Egereva observed her 49th birthday in jail. She is a mother of two. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘A bellwether for new forms of repression’: 2 Indigenous rights advocates remain behind bars in Russia on Apr 16, 2026.